


Synchronicity

by orphan_account



Series: Entangled [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Dogs, Fix-It, M/M, Moira isn't dead, Post S2, Reference to non-con, bad language, everyone is grumpy and sad, kinda depressing i guess, kink meme prompt, the dog lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-04 15:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 25
Words: 36,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1783207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slade did not kill Moira Queen that night, but the rest of his plan unfolded unchanged. Oliver Queen, rather than handing him over to A.R.G.U.S, knocks him out and relocates him to a place of his choosing that no one -- not even Amanda Waller -- knows about. He then tells everyone else that he killed Slade Wilson during their final confrontation and disposed of the body, but won't say where. The truth is, he's trying one last time to save Slade. Because if Slade can't be saved, then can he, Oliver?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Haunted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyPaige](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyPaige/gifts).



**Prologue:** Haunted

Oliver disappeared for a little over three days after Felicity managed to jab Slade with the Mirakuru reversal agent. He checked in verbally – briefly – to announce that Slade was dead. Then he disappeared. Dropped off the grid so completely that even the people at A.R.G.U.S couldn’t locate him. Disabled the tracker in his boot and his comms and just vanished.

Like smoke on the wind.

When he did finally return to the second lair, he was no longer dressed in his leathers. Somewhere along the line he had changed back into street clothes. Dig and Felicity were both there watching, waiting for him. Roy was gone, had gone off hours ago in search of Thea. Dig had sent Lyla away to get some sleep, and she’d been so exhausted she only put up a token resistance before giving in. Waller had – reluctantly – called off the drone strike. And Sara had got on a ship with Nyssa.

Laurel was at the hospital with her father.

Felicity was exhausted. She had only slept in restless snatches, but until Oliver came home safely, she couldn’t rest properly. When he dragged himself into the second lair, it didn’t look like he’d slept either. He had that haggard look that comes from staying awake for several days straight – the tightness in his jaw, the red-rimmed, bruised eyes, the sluggishness to his movements. He was limping badly on his injured leg, but Felicity had no way of knowing whether he’d injured it again when he was fighting with Slade, or after, during the time when he’d been AWOL. There was a scabbed-over cut by his eye, which was puffy and pink and might be getting infected. On the opposite cheek and temple he had an impressive scrape, where he seemed to have met concrete, or the road, with his face.

Somehow, he’d managed to get filthy. It looked like he’d been rolling in dirt. Most of it was on his hands, crusted under his nails, and the knees of his jeans.

“Oliver!” Felicity said, scrambling to her feet the moment she saw him darkening the door.

He looked in her direction and nodded to acknowledge her, but didn’t say anything. Didn’t smile.

There was something dead in his expression.

“Where’ve you been, man?” Diggle asked.

Oliver paused and regarded Dig silently for a moment, as if weighing up whether or not he actually needed to answer. Then he said: “Needed some time by myself.” His eyes were haunted. He looked like he’d watched someone he loved die.

“Oliver,” Felicity said urgently, because there were still pressing matters to attend to. “We couldn’t find Slade’s body. What if—”

They hadn’t taken the time to recover Merlyn’s corpse, and look how that turned out. The man wasn’t dead after all.

Oliver’s face hardened, though his eyes were glittering. “I dealt with it, Felicity. He won’t be coming back this time. I made certain of it.” Then he looked away sharply to stare at the wall, blinking hard.

“Oliver, what did you do?” It was Diggle who asked the question.

He didn’t reply.

“Oliver?” Diggle said again.

Felicity tried, adopting her loud voice. “ _Oliver._ ”

“Buried him. He’s gone. I had to do it myself. He was my brother…” The final four words were muttered more to himself than Felicity or Dig. Oliver stepped around them and limped over to one of the pillars. He was done talking, now. Felicity could see the dismissal in his body language and his expression and the way he slumped exhaustedly down onto the floor, his injured leg held awkwardly out in front of him. He was tired and he was hurting and he had just killed someone he had once considered a friend when he had promised never to kill again, for Tommy.

Felicity understood.

Diggle did too. “You going to be all right, man?” he asked.

Oliver nodded distantly.

Dig left. Felicity hesitated by the door, and before she left she heard Oliver mutter: “Did I do the right thing, though?”

“You did what you had to, Oliver,” she called across the open space.

He glanced up at her briefly, the haunted expression not leaving his eyes, even as he thanked her.

Felicity had a strangely bad feeling in her chest and across the back of her shoulders as she headed home. Like maybe something awful was going to happen, but she had no idea what. And hadn’t they all had enough heartbreak to last them a lifetime?


	2. One: Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slade wakes up and discovers his new prison.

**One:** Here

When Slade came to, he did it with a start. For a moment he was confused, and it took him a second to realise that he hadn’t expected to wake up in the first place. Oliver had shot him. As he rolled onto his back he came to understand that it must have been one of those drug arrows, intended not to kill but to incapacitate. His mouth was dry and head felt like it was filled with sand.

“Where am I?” he asked, figuring that he wasn’t alone.

He was right. Oliver was there, sitting against the wall by the foot of the cot, his head resting against the wall, staring without appearing to actually see at the outdated calendar pinned to the opposite wall. It was faded with age, but Slade could still make out a picture of a cheerful looking sheepdog and a couple of goats by a low stone cairn with mountains rising in the background.

“Some place,” the kid said, vaguely.

Slade sat up, ignoring his swimming vision, aching bruises and rolling stomach, and examined his surroundings in greater detail. He was in a bedroom, of a variety – in the Glades if he had to guess. There was a single window that had been boarded over from the outside. The boards were grey with age, and there was light from a street lamp outside coming in through the cracks. Far newer was the metal window frame, on which a set of solid metal bars had been attached on the inside of the window.

There were two doors. Or, rather, there was one door and then there was an archway where a door had been that led through to what appeared to be a bathroom, from what Slade could make out in the shadows.

The door itself was made of reinforced steel. It was closed, and locked too, probably.

Slade shook his head, trying to clear it of that foggy, drugged feeling. It didn’t help, just sent lancing pain shooting through his head, and he stopped. Then he looked around for Shado, who had been his sole constant during the past five lonely, angry years. She wasn’t there.

She was dead. She’d always been dead, but now Oliver had taken even her shadow from him as well. He had nothing – he was _alone_.

“You should have killed me.”

Oliver looked at his hands. “Maybe,” he conceded.

The little shit knew what he’d done. He _knew_ he’d taken the last thing Slade had had of Shado and _stolen_ it, and then he couldn’t even finish the job properly, because Slade was still breathing. He was _still here_ and he didn’t want to be. The Mirakuru was gone – he could finally die – and the kid couldn’t even _kill_ him. Couldn’t even look him in the eye.

He was just sitting there, staring blankly at his hands now. Was there something _wrong_ with him?

If there was, Slade didn’t want to know. He just wanted to get out of here. Get away, somewhere he could think. Only – it occurred to him that he no longer had any place to go anymore. He’d lost. He said he’d won, but he’d lost. Starling City was still standing, his army was gone. He had failed.

He hadn’t really wanted to succeed, in the end. He’d just been going through the motions. After the night where he failed to kill Moira Queen or her daughter Thea and instead let both women go, largely unharmed except for a couple of bruises here and there from the car crash, he had lost the desire to take everything from Oliver. He had simply been going through the motions, after that…

Hadn’t stopped the kid from taking everything from his again, though.

Slade got to his feet and headed over to the door. He tried the handle, and found that he’d been correct. It was locked. Oliver probably had a key, but Slade couldn’t bring himself to fight the kid for it. They were both still hurting from their last round together, and while Slade was certain that he could make a decent go of beating Oliver bloody, he had no real desire to do so.

He just wanted some privacy.

He went into the other room, the dark room, and fumbled for a light switch.

“It’s on the other wall,” Oliver called to him softly.

Slade didn’t acknowledge hearing him, but he did manage to find the light switch. The bare bulb in the ceiling flickered to life, illuminating a tiny bathroom with a little box shower sans shower curtain, a toilet and a sink. There had clearly once been a mirror on the wall above the sink, because there was a patch where the paint wasn’t as discoloured as it was everywhere else, but it had recently been removed. There were still little filings of sawdust on the sink from when the screws had been taken out.

What was this place? It was like no prison cell Slade had ever seen. In fact, it looked a Hell of a lot like a couple of rooms in an apartment that had been converted to hold a human being.

He went back out into the bedroom and looked around again, searching for the tell-tale gleam of the eye of a CCTV camera. There were none in any of the corners of the room. He scanned the area by the door. Nothing. Slade frowned. Unless Oliver was using tiny cameras, no bigger than thumbtacks, like the ones he had used in the Queen mansion, then there was no video surveillance in here. He would look for hidden cameras later, when he was alone, but Slade had a sneaking suspicion that he wouldn’t find any.

That was definitely unlike any holding facility he imagined he would have wound up in. He should be being watched around the clock after what he’d done. This was… dangerously lax. Granted, it would take serious effort to get out. But there should at least be more to it than whatever _this_ was.

“Kid,” Slade said, again. “Where am I?”

Oliver sighed and looked up at him. “Somewhere they don’t know about,” he replied.

“‘They’ _who_?”

“Everyone.”

Slade tried to understand that for all of two seconds before he gave up. “Who do you mean?”

“I mean everyone,” Oliver snapped at him. “ _No one_ knows about this place except me.”

“Not even your little team?” Slade asked.

“Especially not them,” Oliver replied, the fight going out of him suddenly. “I told them you were dead.”

“But you couldn’t do it.”

There was a pause where Slade stared at Oliver and Oliver stared at a spot on the floor between his knees. Then Oliver sighed. “No,” he disagreed. “I wouldn’t.”

Slade growled. “You’re _pathetic_ ,” he spat. “Get out.”

He expected sass. A glare. A scathing comment. For Oliver to lord it over him that he’d won. Somehow he wasn’t surprised when Oliver gave him a single saddened glance, got to his feet, and left, locking the door behind him. Slade was left truly alone in the converted bedroom, which held nothing more than that calendar with the picture of the sheepdog and the goats, and the cot. With a feeling of sudden, strangling panic he wondered if Oliver would ever come back, or whether he was going to be left to starve to death in here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't even kno why they're sad they just are it seems like it might happen this way


	3. Two: Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thea is missing and Oliver doesn't know what to do so he goes and talks to Slade.

**Two:** Gone

Thea was missing, had been missing four days now, ever since the night Slade unleashed his army on the city. Roy knew something, but he wasn’t saying anything about it. Even when Oliver glared at him furiously, he stayed as silent as the grave. Just shook his head and sighed and said he didn’t know what was going on. But he fucking knew _something_. Moira put out a missing persons report with the police. Felicity had wasted no time in setting up a new computer station in the new lair and was running a facial recognition search geared at finding Thea.

If she was in Starling City, she _would_ be found.

Oliver paced restlessly in the second lair for hours, until his knee locked up on him and he hobbled over to one of the desks to sit down and ride out the pain, waiting for any word as to her whereabouts.

There was nothing, though.

“I’m sorry, Oliver,” Felicity murmured.

He grit his teeth. “I understand.” But it wasn’t okay. This was the second time Thea had disappeared, and this time he knew Slade wasn’t behind it because he knew _exactly_ where Slade was.

It was two o’clock in the morning. Felicity pushed back from the computer, yawning. “I’m going to call it a night,” she said, glancing at him hesitantly, as if gauging his reaction. She kept looking at him like that, like he was something dangerous and unpredictable and she was expecting him to explode. When he didn’t object, she added: “There’s an alert that’ll go straight to my phone and yours if the search picks up anything.”

Oliver nodded. “Thanks Felicity.”

She left.

After a while, he got painfully to his feet and made his way out into the night. When he got on his bike, he had no real idea of where he was going to go. As was happening so often, however, he found himself in the area of the Glades where he was keeping Slade, and when he realised that he was here he decided he might as well check in on the man.

He was keeping Slade in a cramped third-floor apartment. For the past two days he’d been visiting twice a day to drop off food, all of it in cardboard boxes or paper wrappers, with flimsy plastic knives and spoons, because he didn’t trust Slade as far as he could throw him and there was no way he was giving him a ceramic plate to eat off. He didn’t really like the idea of walking in to have a shard of plate driven into his gut, or an improvised shiv slipped between his ribs.

Yesterday, Slade had started remodelling. He’d kicked a hole in the drywall with his bare foot, but Oliver had carefully selected the pair of rooms he was confining the man in, and behind the drywall there was solid brick. He’d been sure to check the mortar, too, to make sure it wasn’t weak or crumbling, before he was prepared to leave Slade there untended.

It was nearly three o’clock as he was climbing the flight of stairs up to the third floor, his knee twinging painfully with every step he took. Oliver didn’t think Slade would even be awake, but that was okay. He had no real desire to see Slade right now anyway. He just needed somewhere safe to crash, and the sagging couch in the living room was good enough. So he quietly let himself into the apartment, locked the door behind him, slipped his shoes off and padded sockfoot through the apartment.

There came the sound of movement in the other room. Slade was awake after all.

Oliver endeavoured to ignore him, making his way into the living room.

Then Slade called out, voice gruff from days of disuse. They had not actually spoken to each other since Slade told him to get lost shortly after he woke up, four days earlier.

“Kid? That you out there?”

Oliver considered ignoring him.

“Kid…? Oliver?”

He sighed, dropped his shoes by the couch and fumbled for the key to the bedroom. It occurred to him that Slade might be waiting for him on the other side of the door in some sort of ambush. He opened the door and pushed it open anyway.

Slade was standing by the barred, boarded-over window. Oliver couldn’t tell what he was doing, because he had his blind side turned to him. He might have been peering out through the gap at the street below, or he might’ve been standing there with his eye closed, taking in the sounds of the early morning.

“You’re back late,” Slade commented, without turning around. Oliver closed the door, listening to the lock engage with a loud _clunk_ , and pocketed the key.

How long had Slade been listening for him to come in?

“What time is it?” Slade asked.

Oliver checked his watch and told him. He watched Slade frown and run a hand tiredly over his face.

“Just how long are you going to keep me here, kid?”

In some ways, Oliver’s decision had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. He’d knocked Slade out, pressed his hand to his comms unit and opened his mouth to tell Amanda Waller to call off her drone strike when he suddenly realised that A.R.G.U.S would want to take him into custody. And he couldn’t do that. So when he finally spoke, lies had spilled from his lips and he’d claimed that Slade was dead and then he had found himself with the task of securing him to the best of his ability.

He had to re-administer sedatives five times to keep Slade under before he managed to convert the old apartment that he first started renting out under an alias when he got back to Starling City nearly two years ago. He had removed the Deathstroke outfit, carefully, preserving it, and the swords, and put them away in the safe behind the couch in the living room. Then he let Slade wake up.

Since then, the enormity of his decision crashed into Oliver, over and over again. The first thought that occurred to him was what would happen if Slade escaped and started killing people again? The second was what would happen if someone, somehow, found out? What if something happened to him, and he ended up dead or in hospital and Slade was left here to _starve_? Hell, what if Slade got sick and needed medical attention of some sort? What was he even doing? This wasn’t legal – or even humane – in any way, shape or form.

It was selfish and cruel and he had no idea what he was doing.

Oliver sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Let me go.”

Oliver shook his head. “I can’t. You know I can’t, Slade.”

“Don’t make me hurt you, kid. Because I will,” Slade growled, turning to face Oliver, his single eye glittering in the darkness of the room.

“Will you?” Oliver asked, tiredly. “Do you even really want to? In the end, why were we fighting, Slade? What purpose did it serve?”

“Revenge,” Slade replied immediately. “For Shado.”

“Does it bother you that at this stage that sounds almost rehearsed?” Oliver said. He moved across the room, skirting around Slade, cautious not to get into his space, and sat down on the floor cross-legged, in his usual spot by the foot of the cot. “It’s been five _years_ , Slade. So much has happened…”

“I told you—” Slade began.

“I know,” Oliver said, cutting him off. “For you it was yesterday. _I know_. I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”

Slade huffed irritably, but rather than continue the old argument, he turned away to start pacing. “Where _were_ you?” he asked, stalking backwards and forwards. He could cross the room in four strides.

“Thea’s missing,” Oliver replied. “We think – my mother has her suspicions – that Merlyn has her.”

Slade paused and turned to fix Oliver with an unreadable gaze. “She doesn’t ever seem to catch a break, does she? Your sister? Between you and her parents.”

Oliver didn’t reply.

“No,” Slade concluded, speaking more to himself than Oliver. “She doesn’t.” Rather than continuing to pace, he sat down on the cot and leant back against the wall, letting his eye fall closed. He was evidently tired. “If you aren’t going to let me go, you could at least leave me with a book or two. Something good. None of that sappy romance crap. Being left alone in a room all day with no form of entertainment at all is cruel and unusual punishment and you know it.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Oliver said. “Not making any promises, though. Might have to make do with those gun magazines Dig’s always leaving lying around, or some old copies of _National Geographic_. I don’t really read.”

“I know.”

They lapsed into a strangely comfortable silence. Both of them kept yawning, but neither seemed to want to admit that they were tired. Finally, as the traffic outside was beginning to get heavier with the approaching dawn and people began to head off to early-morning jobs, Slade told Oliver to fuck off so he could get some rack time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just bumbling along seeing where this takes me


	4. Three: Night terrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver has a nightmare. Slade and Oliver talk.

**Chapter Three:** Night terrors

True to his word, Oliver produced books. He can’t have slept very long, because he woke Slade up coming in with an armful of books before breakfast. Some of them were drivel, and Slade tossed them into the corner of the room without reading more than a page or two, but a couple of the crime novels were… _tolerable_.

They helped pass the time, anyway.

They didn’t speak again for another two nights. Oliver dropped off more food, took away the books Slade had read and the food wrappers and the laundry to deal with, all without a word being exchanged. Slade wasn’t about to _thank_ him for any of this. He was still being held captive, after all.

On the fourth night, Slade woke in the dark with a start. He wasn’t sure what had startled him until he heard noises from the other room. It sounded like… whimpering? Then Oliver screamed, as if he was in agony, and Slade felt his heart lurch. He rolled off the cot and stumbled across the floor to the door, where he paused, listening hard.

Silence, except for the sound of a freight train rolling past slowly several blocks away.

“…Kid?” he called, a dozen horrific scenarios passing through his mind.

Had someone broken into the apartment and _killed_ Oliver?

No. No, surely he would have heard that. There had been no sound of a window opening, or a door being kicked in, or even the quiet cough of a silenced firearm. All of them were sounds that would have woken him in an instant, sounds that he still listened for subconsciously, even though he’d been off that Godforsaken island, out of ASIS, for five _years_ now. He hadn’t been able to let that go. Not with the Mirakuru in his system, keeping him on edge all the time, always prepared to fight to defend his life.

Growling in frustration at not knowing what was going on, wishing he was stronger so that he could just burst through this _cursed_ door, Slade slammed his fist against the metal with an echoing _clang_. He felt the pain in his knuckles only distantly. “Oliver!”

He paused to listen again. And then… was that _sobbing_?

No. Couldn’t be.

He rattled the door. “Kid! Hey, Queen! The fuck’s going on?”

Suddenly, Oliver’s voice came from the other side of the door. Close. How had he gotten that close when he was still limping? Slade hadn’t heard him.

“What, Slade?” he asked, voice slightly muffled.

“What’s going on?” Slade repeated,

“Nothing.” His tone was clipped.

Slade bit back a snarl of irritation. “Don’t lie to me, kid. You screamed.”

Silence again. Oliver didn’t reply.

“Kid?” Slade asked, wondering if he’d left. He better not have fucking left.

“What?” No, he was still there, just outside the door. Good.

“Let me out.”

There was a pause, as if the kid was genuinely considering that. Then he said: “I can’t do that, Slade.”

“Fine. Come in here, then. I want to see you.”

Slade half expected him to say no, but a moment later Oliver was telling him to step away from the door, so he did, and then the kid was hesitating in the doorway, his face pale, eyes bloodshot and sparkling in the light coming through the gaps on the boards over the window, tear-streaks on his cheeks. Damn. He’d been crying. The grazes on his face were almost healed, and the bruises had faded from blue and purple to yellow and green, though the cut by his eye was still scabbed and Slade reflected that it really should have received stitches, or at least some form of medical attention. He was dressed in sweat pants and a T-shirt and he had a key on a cord around his neck and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

“What do you want, Slade?” he asked, not entering the cell. There was a tenseness in his posture, a set to his jaw and shoulders, that reminded Slade of a porcupine with its quills up. He was _literally_ bristling defensively.

Slade recalled that Oliver had often suffered night terrors back on the island, and surmised that he had not managed to grow out of them in the years they had spent apart. In fact, it appeared that the kid had it worse than ever. He felt the faintest hint of sorrow stirring in his chest, and realised he actually wanted to know what it was that had him so upset.

“You want to talk about it?” he said.

Oliver gave him a stare of blank incomprehension. “What?”

A long time ago, back on the island, before Fyers and Shado and Yao Fei, when it was just the two of them, Slade had talked a couple of Oliver’s nightmares through with him after the kid woke him up by screaming or kicking him in the night. There had been two particularly bad recurring ones – one about his friend Sara drowning and the other about his father shooting himself.

“You can talk to me, kid,” Slade said, slowly, so that the idiot would understand. “If you want to.”

Oliver shook his head and turned to leave. Slade reached out and grabbed his wrist and Oliver froze a second before he attacked.

“Slade,” he breathed through gritted teeth, not moving an inch. “Let me go.”

Slade didn’t. “It’s high time we talked, Oliver,” he said, looking the kid in the eyes as best he could.

Somehow, those words made Oliver flinch away from him, attempting to pull his arm from Slade’s grip as a panicked expression crossed his face, followed by a furious scowl.

“Like adults,” Slade added. He’d had a lot of time to get his head on straight over the past few days. A lot of peace and quiet and time to just think, clearly, for the first time in _years_. Without the ghost of Shado talking to him every moment of the day, twisting his every thought and action. As much as he missed her, as lonely as he was, the cobwebs that had been clouding his vision were gone at long last. “We can do that, can’t we?”

“I don’t—” Oliver began. In a moment, he was going to take a swing at him. Slade could see it in the way he was shifting his body weight.

“I’m sorry, kid,” Slade said, for the first time. Oliver jerked.

“What?” he said. “No. _No_. It was my fault. I—”

Slade cut him off. “Did everything you could, under the circumstances. Couldn’t’ve expected anything better from you at the time. I see that now.”

Oliver’s eyes narrowed and he looked at Slade searchingly, as if trying to work out whether Slade was trying to trick him or not. “I—” he began, then trailed off. “I miss her,” he admitted, staring down at Slade’s hand on his wrist. “Still. Every day. And Yao Fei. And… and I missed you.”

In some distant way, Slade thought he might’ve missed having to save Oliver’s sorry ass over and over again too, over the years. Even as he’d been planning to take everything from the kid. Of course, Oliver wasn’t so sorry these days. He’d managed to put together a good team of skilled, competent people who knew what they were doing and were loyal to each other. He could keep up with the best of them when it came to killing, too, if the body count from his first year as the Starling City vigilante was anything to go by.

Hell, Oliver had managed to put a stop to him, in spite of everything.

“They would’ve been proud, kid,” Slade said. “You’re a good shot and a good man. You saved a lot of people.”

He let Oliver’s wrist go and headed back over to his cot, where he sat down. Oliver hesitated, then entered the room and pushed the door shut behind him. For a moment it looked like he was going to sit on the floor again, until Slade nodded to the other end of the cot. “Don’t have to sit on the floor, kid.”

So Oliver sat down beside him, pulling his blanket tight around his shoulders.

“What did you dream about?” Slade asked.

“Someone died,” Oliver replied, picking at a threat on the blanket. “You never met them, though. That was after…”

Slade didn’t push. He didn’t even really want to know. Instead, he changed the subject. “Who’s going to become mayor now that Blood’s dead?”

Oliver glanced at him. “Oh. I didn’t tell you. My mother’s agreed to take up the position in the interim, until new candidates are found and another election can be organised. Right now no one really wants the job after what Isabel did to him.”

There was a pause. Slade filled it by saying: “To be fair, she was somewhat unhinged before the Mirakuru.”

“You knew about her and my dad?” Oliver asked.

Slade grunted. He’d known all right. He’d needed to find someone willing to work against the Queen family, and Rochev had been the perfect candidate because of the way she felt slighted.

“Have you found Thea yet?”

The expression on Oliver’s face was all Slade needed to know. If he was honest, Slade felt sorry for the girl. She might’ve been born rich, and white, but she’d somehow managed to have a difficult life all the same. And her parentage really was extremely unfortunate. Enough to give any kid issues.

“No,” Oliver said. “We’re expanding our search, but…” He trailed off, blinking. “I _can’t_ let anything happen to her.”

“Can’t help it if anything does,” Slade replied. “Some things are out of your control, kid.” He’d already proved that himself.

Oliver huffed a frustrated sigh. “I know. I just—”

“It’s not your fault. If her father took her,” Slade said. “Then that’s on him.”

Oliver didn’t say anything, which let Slade know that’d been what he was about to say. He just stared at that calendar of the happy sheepdog and his goats without really appearing to see it. They sat in silence for a while.

“Sometimes I want to go back to the island,” Oliver said. “I went back after the Undertaking, but I had to come back because things were falling apart here. It – I don’t know. Life was so much simpler back then, you know? After Fyers. When it was just you and me and Shado and all we had to do was keep breathing until sunrise tomorrow.”

“I know, kid. I can understand that,” Slade said. He reached out an arm and laid his hand on Oliver’s shoulder. The kid immediately went absolutely rigid and fixed him with a wild-eyed stare. Neither of them moved for several long seconds, and then Slade began to rub his thumb in soft circles through the fabric of the blanket. “Sometimes it feels like that Goddamned island is actually home and this here is the island.”

“Brought the island with us,” Oliver said, uttering a mirthless little laugh. “We’d probably take it back again, if we ever went back.”

“Probably,” Slade agreed.

And they started to talk about the good times they had. About the little joys, like getting up to watch the sun rise, and that time they were hunting in the hills and they found that freshwater spring, and the taste of rabbit. Slade hadn’t eaten rabbit in years now, and Oliver hadn’t since the last time he’d been on the island months earlier, but suddenly the kid’s eyes were sparkling and he promised to start looking around butcher’s stores the following morning in search of rabbit, even if it was expensive.

Slade had temporarily forgotten that the kid didn’t have his riches anymore. He felt a pang of nagging guilt, but then Oliver was musing about the best way to cook bunny, since he didn’t exactly have an open fire to roast it over and the kitchen in the apartment was pretty understocked.

Then they talked about Shado. Openly and frankly. Not about her death – they shirked that topic entirely. Rather, they spoke about her good qualities. It didn’t hurt as much as Slade thought it would. Maybe because his mind was clearer now. Shado turned to Yao Fei, which turned to Oliver telling Slade anecdotes about his first six months on the island, struggling to survive. Some of them Slade had heard before. Others were stupid little things that Oliver had been too proud to admit to before, during the first times of their acquaintanceship. Like the time he tripped over root, wound up with a grazed knee that then got infected and spent three days delirious while Yao Fei tried to stop him taking all his clothes off because they had no antibiotics and he was too nauseous to keep the herbs down long enough for them to work.

Slade laughed.

Later, they lapsed into silence, and later still Slade realised that Oliver had fallen asleep sitting up, his head slumping onto his shoulder. Glancing at Oliver’s watch, he noted that there was another couple of hours before dawn, so he very carefully manipulated Oliver over onto his side on the cot, so he wouldn’t get a crick in his neck.

At one point, while Slade was moving him, Oliver stirred.

“You’re all right, kid,” Slade murmured, rubbing his side gently. “You’re safe. There’s no one here but us. You fell asleep sitting up again.”

He used to do that quite a lot sitting by the fire after a long day of training. More than once, Slade had had to kick him awake. And later, when he’d warmed up to the kid a bit, he used to just put him to bed without even bothering to wake him up.

And Oliver shifted and settled, muttering something Slade didn’t hear under his breath.

Damn. So subconsciously, Oliver remembered those times as well. Subconsciously, he still trusted him, after everything.

After half an hour, Oliver began to fidget and twitch, whimpering, and Slade realised he was having a nightmare. When he heard Oliver say his own name, he felt the guilt crash into him with the force of a charging bull.

“No,” Oliver murmured. “No, no. Please don’t. Don’t do this.” He screwed his eyes shut tighter, frowning, his hands balling into fists.

Slade sat on the cot by his head and running his fingers through Oliver’s bristly hair until he stilled. His chest ached. What’d he _done_?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Isabel Rochev's Russian, isn't she? What's up w/ her surname? She's got the masculine version even though she's a woman? Or did she do that to Americanise or what?


	5. Four: Trust

**Chapter Four:** Trust

Months of living under enormous strain, in fear over the lives of the people he loved, erratic sleep or no sleep at all for nights on end, finally caught up to him, and Oliver only woke up near sundown because Slade kept nudging him in the ribs.

“Come on, kid. Up.”

“What?” Oliver asked, caught between a sort of sick horror over the fact that he’d been _stupid_ enough to let his guard down and fall asleep in Slade’s presence – and a sort of dazed confusion because he was hungry and thirsty and needed to piss and he had no idea how long he’d slept but judging by the light, it’d been a while and Slade hadn’t taken the opportunity to strangle him in his sleep even though he’d had plenty of time to do it.

“Your phone’s ringing. Third time in the last five minutes. You had better go get it.” Slade nodded towards the door.

And sure enough, when he paused to listen, Oliver _could_ hear the sound of his phone buzzing where he’d left it on the counter in the other room.

 _Thea_!

Oliver catapulted off the cot, fumbled with the key and the door, and dashed into the living room, picking up the phone _just_ as it stopped ringing.

“Who was it?” Slade asked, and Oliver spun around at the same time as he realised he hadn’t shut the door. Slade was standing in the doorway, examining the living room curiously, taking in the moth-eaten curtains over the windows, the mildew on the wallpaper in that one corner near the ceiling, the sagging couch with the stuffing spilling out of its cushions from various holes. “Not exactly the Ritz, is this place? I actually think the cell is nicer.”

He moved into the kitchen area to poke through the refrigerator. Oliver watched him warily, forgetting his phone for the moment as Slade took the cap off the milk and sniffed it, grimacing.

“Milk’s off. How long was this even in there?” He squinted at the expiration date then grimaced again before tipping it down the sink. And then he went back to cleaning out the fridge.

Oliver’s phone rang again. ‘ _Felicity’_ popped up. He hastily answered it. “Yes? Is it Thea?”

A sigh. “ _No. I’m sorry. Still no sign, Oliver. Why weren’t you answering?_ ”

“I was—” Oliver considered all of the possible responses he could give her.

“Shower,” Slade supplied in a low voice.

“In the shower,” Oliver said, automatically. “Didn’t hear it.”

“ _Right,_ ” Felicity replied. “ _You don’t_ normally _shower at this time of day. What were you – oh,_ ” she muttered, and Oliver wished sometimes that she knew a little bit less about his daily timetable. Then she said: “ _Not going there, though. We need you to come in, Oliver._ ”

Which meant that, inevitably, there was something that needed his attention. “What’s going on?”

“ _Got a TV near you?_ ” was her reply.

“That bad, then,” Oliver said, digging around in the couch cushions for the remote control for the crappy little TV. He flicked it on and watched long enough to realise that the a hostage situation downtown was serious and required his immediate attention. “I’m on my way.”

“ _Where are you?_ ” Felicity asked. “ _Dig can_ —”

“I’ve got my bike,” he said. “There in ten minutes.” He rang off, then looked at Slade, who was leaning against the counter with a mug of instant coffee – black since there was no milk – and waiting for the toast to pop.

“Should have told her twenty,” Slade said. “You’re still wearing your pyjamas, kid.”

Oliver hastily got changed. When his toast popped, Slade took it back through to the cell and pulled the door closed behind him. Oliver listened to the lock engage, feeling faintly incredulous, and then he was out the door on the way to the second lair to get a rundown on the situation.

He didn’t get back until nine hours later, with bruised ribs and his arm in a sling because he’d been winged by a guy with a Colt M1911. He would live, but Dig had had to dig the bullet out for him and stitch him up while Felicity watched and cringed and then applied the antiseptic for him.

Slade was still awake and waiting for him. As soon as he entered the apartment, the other man called out. Oliver was hurting, and tired, and just wanted some time alone, but he still found himself pulling the key from around his neck to unlock the door. Slade took one look at him, his face becoming strangely blank and expressionless as he took in the sling and the careful way Oliver was holding himself.

“You should consider Kevlar sometime,” he said. “You’re going to get yourself killed at the rate you’re going.”

Maybe that was what Oliver kept waiting for. He promised his father he wouldn’t take his own life. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be killed in a fight. Except no one he’d been up against yet had been able to do it. Not even Slade. He was just too damned good at surviving and finding a way to put his enemies down in his stead.

He hated surviving. It was too painful. Everyone around him kept dying, or turning in monsters. His dad died. Yao Fei died. Shado died. Sara died and then she didn’t but she was a killer. Slade had been his only friend, and then his enemy, and then he’d killed him but he hadn’t after all and the whole thing was doing his head in. And Helena – well, he might’ve been wrong about her to begin with. Then Tommy died too.

Even his own mother was a monster, and although they had reconciled – to an extent – he didn’t _trust_ her. He was afraid of the woman who’d birthed him, of what she would do and the lengths she was willing to go to.

How long before Felicity died, or Dig, or one of them became someone he didn’t recognise anymore?

Nothing was ever stable or safe or good, even here in Starling City, and he hated it.

Oliver didn’t say anything. Just looked down at the grimy carpet.

Slade seemed to understand his silence. “Oh, kid. No.” There was fucking _pity_ in his voice.

“ _Don’t,_ ” Oliver spat.

Slade, who had been about to move, froze. “Don’t what, Oliver?”

“Don’t you _dare_ —” _Don’t feel sorry for me._

“All right,” Slade said, but a glance in his direction showed he still had that _look_ on his face. “Okay. You eaten yet? You look half dead.”

And that was how Slade ended up cooking him a meal using the ingredients he deemed safe out of the refrigerator. Later, when Oliver started dreaming about the night Tommy died, Slade woke him up and Oliver realised he’d left the cell door open again. Slade hadn’t gone anywhere, though. For some reason even though he had the opportunity to flee, disappear into the woodwork once and for all and never return, he was still sitting in Oliver’s crappy little apartment that he was renting under an alias in the Glades, keeping him company while he tried to get his breathing under control again in the small hours of the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sad people make me feel sad :(


	6. Five: Honest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slade and Oliver talk.

**Chapter Five:** Honest

“So,” Slade said over breakfast, after Oliver had been out and purchased more milk. “Felicity.”

He watched as Oliver froze on the other side of the tiny plastic table and fixed him with a fierce glare. “If you even _think_ about laying a single hand on one of my friends again—” the kid started.

“Keep your hair on,” Slade said, cutting him off. “I just wanted to know if you and her were really…” He trailed off, uncertain how to phrase the question.

Oliver relaxed again, shaking his head. “No. It was a trick… I couldn’t think of any other way. You had Laurel and I had to do something fast. I still can’t really believe you even _fell_ for it. Why would I leave her _there_ , of all places? Surely you knew I’d worked out you bugged the place.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” Slade replied.

He wanted to ask what else he’d done to the kid, during the times when his memory became hazy and he wasn’t sure whether what he remembered was dream or reality or hallucination or some confusing mix thereof, but he couldn’t muster the courage. He was a fucking coward and while he wasn’t about to tell Oliver or anyone else, he was man enough to admit it to himself. There were a lot of things that he thought he’d only dreamed, at the time he had wished were real, but now he dearly hoped hadn’t happened.

“I noticed,” Oliver quipped. “But you’re okay now, right? You aren’t still seeing things that aren’t there?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Slade said.

There was a pause. Oliver was staring at him intently. “Not… not Shado?” he asked, swallowing heavily.

“… No. Not Shado,” Slade said. “No talking dogs or fiery demons or psychedelic clouds, either.”

Oliver looked mildly alarmed. “You saw those before?”

Slade laughed. “No. Only Shado. Only ever Shado.”

“I was going to ask how you managed to convince anyone you were sane if you were walking around having conversations with dogs,” Oliver said.

“Plenty of people have conversations with their pets,” Slade pointed out. “Some middle-aged women have little dogs that have opinions on everything from politicians and the economy to pop stars.”

Oliver looked doubtful about that. “And the demons?” he asked.

“Might’ve had more trouble with fiery demons,” Slade admitted. He paused, then added: “No more memory lapses, either.”

“Good,” Oliver said. He seemed worried. “You’re sure there are no side effects? Roy hasn’t had any, but he didn’t have the Mirakuru in his system anywhere near as long as you did. I’m not talking about mental stuff right now – I mean – nothing else is wrong now it’s gone?”

Slade considered that. It’d been a long time since he healed from an injury normally, and he still had bruises and tender spots from the night Oliver stripped him of the Mirakuru. He didn’t think there was anything wrong, however. As far as he was aware, all his internal organs were still working as they should, and if his reflexes were worse and his eyesight and hearing duller, well, that was to be expected.

“I’m fine,” he said.

They lapsed into silence for a time, during which Slade finished his breakfast and picked up his plate to wash it in the sink.

“It’s Sunday,” Oliver announced randomly.

“Okay,” Slade said. “Pass me your plate.”

Oliver handed it over and watched as Slade washed it, too. Slade glanced at him a couple of times to find him frowning deeply, seemingly deep in introspection. He left the kid to his thoughts.

As he set the last of the dishes on the draining board, Oliver said: “I don’t know what to do, Slade.”

“About what?”

“You.”

_Ah_. Slade turned to him, leaning against the counter. “I thought you were keeping me here to prevent me from committing any further atrocities.”

“I am?” Oliver replied, but he sounded hesitant, questioning. “If anyone ever finds out… You’ll be incarcerated somewhere else, somewhere worse, for the rest of your natural life. Probably in some A.R.G.U.S facility somewhere.”

“And just how long did you intend to keep me here?” Slade asked.

He wasn’t quite sure when it’d happened, but he had no intention of leaving. He might’ve wanted to vanish for the first few days, but he had realised some time ago that he didn’t have anywhere to go to. If he left, he would be on the run. A wanted criminal. And what would he _do_? Somewhere along the line he’d lost the drive for revenge. Without it, without the Mirakuru, what was he really? A broken man, forty years old, responsible for the murders of dozens of innocent people, with nothing left to live for.

Oliver, although he had a purpose, seemed to be just as lost as he was. At least if he stayed here, he might have some chance of righting some of the wrongs he’d committed against the kid. He wasn’t stupid enough to think they could ever truly be brothers-in-arms again – Oliver would never trust him _that_ much – but at least they wouldn’t be enemies. And maybe he could help the kid in some way. He wasn’t sure how, but the desire to aid him was there.

“I want to go out,” Oliver announced. “Do you want to come?”

“Where?” Slade asked.

Oliver gave him a safety razor and he shaved, changed out of the track pants and A-shirt he’d been wearing into something more appropriate for outside, and they went to the park. Slade kept the hood of his jacket up and his head down, with the shadow of his ball cap hiding most of his face. He didn’t fail to notice the way that Oliver kept switching between scanning the people around them and keeping a leery eye on him, perhaps to make sure he didn’t make a break for it.

It was a nice day. The sun was out and Slade was overdressed. He sweated, but it was better to be warm than to be recognised.

They got ice cream and stopped to watch the children playing on the jungle gym.

Slade wondered how Joe was getting on. He’d just been a little boy the last time he saw him, but he’d be about ready to enter middle school now. Oliver, through Felicity, would have the means to find out, but Slade didn’t know how to ask – and anyway, he’d been so wrapped up in his own personal desire for revenge for the past five years that he’d practically forgotten Joe existed. If that didn’t make him the worst father that ever existed, he didn’t know what did.

Everyone would be a lot better off if he never went down that road again and let the boy grow up in peace with his grandparents back in Australia.

“On the island, ice cream was one of the things I missed most,” Oliver said. “You know, apart from hot showers and beds and real food and having a real roof over my head and not being shot at. I used to daydream about it sometimes, particularly during summer, when it got really hot.”

Slade smiled. “Might’ve had that same daydream once or twice myself.”

After the park, they wandered the streets of the downtown area. They weren’t really window shopping – Oliver didn’t have enough money anymore for frugalities – but they occasionally pointed out some ridiculous item to each other. They had lunch in a little diner – not _Big Belly Burger_ , which Oliver explained was his favourite but he would be recognised there – and headed back to the apartment late in the afternoon after stopping at a butcher where they managed to find frozen rabbit.

Slade cooked, because Oliver’s arm was in the sling. He was no chef by anyone’s standard, but the fare was edible, and Oliver smiled nostalgically after he took the first bite of his dinner.

“Thank you,” he said, looking Slade in the eye, gratitude written openly across his face.

Slade grunted in acknowledgment.

Later, Oliver fell asleep trying to read a book Felicity had recommended while Slade was watching a crap movie on the tele. Slade left him alone where he sat on the couch for another hour or so, until the movie ended, before cautiously waking him up and ordering him to go to bed. Oliver grumbled under his breath but got changed, and they both retired – Oliver to the too small, sagging couch, and Slade into the cell. He left the door ajar and Oliver neither objected nor got up to close it himself.

Slade was not surprised when he was woken a little after two o’clock in the morning by a strangled yelp from the other room, followed by: “ _No!_ ”

He rolled off the cot and padded through to the living room to find Oliver sitting on the couch with his head in his hands, breathing hard.

“You all right, kid?” he asked softly.

“Need a minute,” Oliver replied, and his voice was shaky, clipped, which let Slade know he’d had another nightmare involving himself.

He was too damn afraid to ask what it was he’d done, so he stayed where he was and waited for a signal – any signal – from Oliver. If the kid asked to be left alone, fine. If he wanted someone to talk to, that was equally okay. Just – he needed to know how to _help_.

When Oliver got up and began to recheck the windows and the fire escape and the door to see if the apartment was secure, even though he had to _know_ it was, Slade started wondering what the Hell else had happened to the kid over the years since the events on the _Amazo_ and Slade’s return to Starling City.

“Kid,” Slade said again.

“Yeah?” Oliver asked, warily, from over by the window where he had been peering down into the dark street.

“C’mere.”

Oliver just looked at him. He reminded Slade a bit of a cornered wolf with its hackles up, one step away from baring its teeth and attempting to bite. “What do you want, Slade?”

“I want to know what’s bothering you,” Slade replied. “What did you dream about just now?”

Oliver averted his gaze, turning his head to stare at the dilapidated baseboard instead. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered.

“Okay,” Slade said. “You got anything to drink in this place? I could do with a drink.”

Oliver shook his head. “I don’t drink anymore. Upsets my reflexes.”

“Cocoa, then?”

So Slade made two cups of hot, sugary cocoa with little animal-shaped marshmallows that Felicity had apparently given Oliver. He even managed to find a packet of slightly stale cookies, which they dipped in their cocoa. Oliver didn’t say anything. Slade let him alone.

They sat up together until dawn in a companionable silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm in a rly bad mood rite now like u don't evn kno >:(
> 
> nothing 2 do with this story tho
> 
> oliver's kinda turning out more damaged than slade but o well we'll just see where this takes me i'm totally making this up on the fly rite now


	7. Six: Touches

**Chapter Six:** Touches

Oliver was working out in the second lair – they really needed a better name for it – that evening while Felicity was updating one of her programs, Dig was checking and cleaning the firearms they had managed to salvage from the wreck of the Foundry, and Roy was working on some target practice, when Felicity got a phone call.

“Oliver,” Felicity called. “It’s for you. It’s Laurel.”

Oliver stepped away from the training dummy and approached her desk to accept the phone.

“Laurel?” he asked. Detective Lance hadn’t come around from the anaesthetic after his most recent operation to repair a bleed in his liver. So far, he’d undergone surgery three times, and each time it looked hopeful only for complications to arise.

“ _Oliver,_ ” Laurel said. “ _Dad’s finally awake. It looks like he’s going to pull through._ ”

“That’s great, Laurel,” Oliver said.

“ _He’s asking for you._ ”

Oliver paused. “Do you know why?”

“ _No idea,_ ” Laurel replied. “ _Do you think you could come?_ ”

“Yeah, sure.” Oliver checked his watch. Visiting hours for non-family-members were over. “Tell him I’ll swing by tomorrow.”

“ _Thank you Oliver,_ ” Laurel said. “ _For everything. Any news on Thea?_ ”

“No.” He sighed.

“ _I’m sorry. I know how you must be feeling right now._ ”

“Thanks,” Oliver said, because there was no real reply to a comment like that. “Will you be at the hospital tomorrow?”

“ _Yes. I’ll probably see you then,_ ” Laurel replied. “ _Do you_ _want to get coffee after?_ ”

Oliver considered for a moment. Did he want to re-establish ties with Laurel? No. He didn’t think he could deal with getting close to anyone right now. It was just too difficult. “As friends?” he clarified, cautiously.

“ _As friends,_ ” Laurel agreed, and she didn’t sound disappointed, which was a relief.

He rang off. “Going to see Detective Lance tomorrow,” he announced to the other three.

“Can I come with you?” Felicity asked, immediately, looking up from her computers. “I’ve been really worried about him. Is he okay? Please tell me he’s okay and you’re not going to visit because he’s on his deathbed – no, he can’t be on his deathbed or you wouldn’t have said ‘that’s great.’ Is he awake. Is he going to be okay?”

Oliver frowned. “I don’t see why not,” he said, after a pause. “And yes, he’s awake, apparently.”

Felicity smiled and clasped her hands together over her chest. “Yay. Thank goodness. That’s brilliant! I needed some good news.”

“We all did,” Dig said. “I’m glad.”

Roy said nothing. Just scowled at the target he was shooting at and loosed another arrow. His aim was getting a lot better. He was only a couple of inches off-centre now.

It was a quiet night and while Oliver had ditched the sling, he wasn’t up to patrolling yet or any sort of serious upper-body work outs with his arm, so he headed back to his apartment early. He arrived to find Slade reading on the couch, the television on with the volume turned down low in the background.

“There’s steak in the fridge,” Slade said, glancing up at him briefly before going back to his book, which was some nature thing about Alaska.

Oliver paused, trying to work that out. “Steak?”

“I went to the store. I kept my head down and used cash, so don’t worry.”

“Where’d you get cash?” Oliver asked, a chill running down his spine as a hundred different scenarios crossed his mind.

Slade dog-eared his page and put his book down on the floor beside the couch. “I didn’t do anything _illegal_. I’m not a monster.”

Oliver’s heart thudded painfully. _Monster_. Everyone was a monster, deep down. They just didn’t show it most of the time. “What _did_ you do, Slade?”

“How do you normally get cash?” Slade replied. Rhetorically, Oliver assumed, because when people wanted money they usually got jobs. “You left twenty dollars on the counter three days ago – or did you forget? I used that.”

And suddenly everything was okay again. Oliver relaxed and chuckled weakly. “Oh yeah. I did forget. Sorry.”

“S’ alright,” Slade said, getting up and moving into the kitchen. “Go. Sit down. I’ll get that dinner for you.”

When the dishes had been done, Oliver joined Slade on the couch and read about the bull moose of Alaska over his shoulder.

“Ever seen one?” Slade asked him.

Oliver shook his head.

“They’re huge. Some of the mature males get so big you wouldn’t even believe it…” Slade blinked and rubbed his eye. “Ugh. I’m getting old. I’ll need to get glasses one of these days. Fine print’s not as easy as it used to be.”

Oliver snorted, trying to imagine Slade wearing both an eye-patch and a pair of glasses. “Maybe a – what are those things called? – oh yeah. Maybe a monocle,” he suggested. “I don’t think glasses would suit you.”

“And a _monocle_ would?” Slade asked.

“I don’t know,” Oliver replied. “Maybe if you were wearing another one of those suits and your beard was trimmed… You’d look classy.”

Slade snorted. “ _Classy_ ,” he laughed. “That’ll be the day. It’s looking more and more like I’ll spend the rest of my days here. No need to bother with dressing up and looking ‘classy.’”

“Sorry,” Oliver muttered, biting his lip.

“Don’t be. I’ve got nowhere else to go.” Slade was staring at Oliver now, and the laughter disappeared from his face to be replaced by an expression of melancholy. “You’re all I’ve got left, now, kid. Don’t be sorry.” He reached out a hand and laid it on Oliver’s uninjured shoulder, which he gave a gentle squeeze. “I’m serious, Oliver.”

“I—” Oliver began, dropping his gaze to his lap because he couldn’t meet the intensity of Slade’s stare any longer. “But—”

“No buts, kid. If it weren’t for you, I would have died on the island a dozen times over. You did what you could, with what training you had, and I was an idiot not to see it before.” He gave Oliver a gentle shake. “I mean it. When I said you were my brother, I wasn’t lying. I’m not lying now.”

“I tried to kill you,” Oliver objected. _You don’t try to kill the people you love_.

“To be fair, I deserved it,” Slade replied. His hand migrated from Oliver’s shoulder to his cheek, thumb stroking his jawbone. “You don’t have to apologise to me anymore, kid. I understand and I forgive you. I’m the one who should be apologising to _you_ now because what I’ve done far outweighs whatever you could possibly have done to me.”

Oliver’s breath caught in his throat and his chest constricted. _Please_ , echoed in his mind. _Please no. Don’t hurt me again_.

Slade regarded him sadly for another few moments, then dropped his hand again and Oliver nearly sighed aloud in relief.

“Sorry,” Slade muttered gruffly.

Oliver immediately felt guilty, because it occurred to him that the other man was just trying to bridge the gap between them again. He probably didn’t even remember what’d happened on the _Amazo_. He’d been nearly completely out of his mind then, almost like Roy in his Mirakuru-induced rage. Roy seemed to have no recollection of what had happened during those hours of madness whatsoever and Oliver had a sneaking feeling that Slade was the same.

That meant it wasn’t his fault.

It still scared him, though. As much as he wanted to save Slade, who he had long counted as one of his closest friends even as he was his enemy, Oliver was still utterly terrified of him and what he could do to him again.

He needed to make an effort. So, gritting his teeth, Oliver forced himself to relax on the couch and leant closer to keep reading the book with Slade. And when Slade casually wrapped an arm around his shoulders, like he used to on the bitterly cold nights on the island when Oliver was freezing and his teeth were chattering, Oliver let him. He even might’ve pressed in close to Slade’s side, enjoying the warmth of another human body close to his for the first time in weeks and weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm getting bored with them dancing around each other gonna start maybe seeing a little action soon-ish


	8. Seven: Agitation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laurel and Oliver talk. Oliver can't sleep.

**Chapter Seven:** Agitation

In the couple of weeks he’d been in the hospital, Detective Lance had lost weight. Not much, but enough to make him look like less like himself and more like a shadow. He was pale and had bruises under his eyes and there was a glazed expression on his face that Oliver assumed was from all of the painkillers he was on.

Laurel was sitting by his bedside. Between her job as an Assistant District Attorney – which Oliver understood was a lot more demanding in the aftermath of DA Spencer’s death at the hands of one of Slade’s soldiers – and keeping a vigil by her father’s side, she looked almost as bad as Detective Lance did. There was that exhausted, worried expression on her face that had been there every time Oliver had seen her over the past couple of weeks.

“Oliver,” she said, glancing up as he knocking on the door and stepped into the room. “You made it.”

“Said I would,” Oliver replied.

Detective Lance cleared his throat, looking pointedly at Laurel. “Sweetie. Would you give us a minute?” his voice was weak and scratchy.

Laurel pursed her lips, frowned, gave Oliver a questioning look but Oliver had no idea so he just shrugged, so she nodded. “Sure. I’ll be right outside when you’re done.” She picked up her handbag off the floor and left the room.

Lance regarded Oliver seriously for a minute. Then he said: “Thank you, Oliver,” and that was it.

Oliver stared at him. “For what?”

“You can go now,” Detective Lance replied, rather than answering Oliver’s question. “Go on. Leave.”

“I’m sorry?” Oliver said, in confusion. “What were we talking about?”

“I know you’re not the idiot you make out to be sometimes,” Lance said. “Don’t play dumb with me, Queen. I’ve come awfully close to dying several times over recently and it occurred to me that I never got a chance to thank you for everything you’ve done. If I wasn’t so high on morphine right now, I probably wouldn’t even bother. Don’t ask me to repeat myself. Now go away and leave me to suffer in peace.”

Oliver left, feeling somewhat disturbed.

True to her word, Laurel was waiting just outside his hospital room.

“What did my father want?” she asked.

“Not sure,” Oliver replied, because he still wasn’t certain whether Lance had been warning him to watch himself more closely so no one else found out about who he was, or whether he’d been genuinely thanking him. “Want to get that coffee now?”

“Do I ever?” Laurel responded. “I’ve been waiting all morning.”

They left the hospital and headed to a café down the street. Their conversation was light and easy. They talked about her job and the case she’d most recently taken, a District Court judge who she severely disliked, how her mother was doing in Central City. Neither of them had any word about Sara, and for a fleeting moment they both fell silent, but then Laurel started talking about the pigeon that had made a nest on her apartment window and laid eggs there.

Eventually, they moved onto more serious topics.

“Oliver. Why are you screening your mother’s phone calls?”

“How do you know about that?” he asked.

Laurel seemed mildly exasperated. “You’re not even going to try to deny it?”

Oliver shook his head.

“Ollie, she rang me yesterday to ask if I’d seen you lately. She’s worried about you and you apparently haven’t spoken to her since – _when_?”

“Since we reported Thea missing to the police,” Oliver replied, examining his half-drunk cup of coffee interestedly.

“Why?”

Oliver sighed. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

Oliver took note of the proximity of the people at the next table over and dropped his voice. “She wants to speak with a man Sara knows who may have better luck at tracking down Malcolm than we’re having.” And no matter how much he missed Thea, he was not going to involve the League of Assassins. He _wasn’t_. Moira had at least agreed not to go ahead and speak to Ra’s al Ghul unless Oliver also agreed – but he wasn’t willing to speak to her yet.

That was a can of worms he wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole if he could at all avoid it. And that meant avoiding his mother, who was bound to put immense pressure on him. She was very good at manipulating people and he _knew_ it.

“You mean—?” Laurel started, then broke off hastily.

Oliver nodded. “Nyssa’s dad. I just can’t talk to her right now.”

Laurel bit her lip. “If you’re sure that’s the best course of action. I mean – you did work things out so recently and everything…”

“I know,” Oliver sighed.

“What are you going to now, then, Ollie?” Laurel asked, changing the subject. “I mean, about Queen Consolidated and all that?”

Oliver shrugged. “I don’t know. In the short term, I need to start thinking about getting a job, but I’m not really qualified for much.”

Laurel started to object.

“No,” Oliver said. “Really. I scraped through high school. I dropped out of college. I might not have spent any time in prison, but I _do_ have a criminal record. I spent five of the past seven years on a deserted island with no contact with anyone – I still haven’t caught up on all the pop culture I missed. And then I ended up CEO of QC and did a – frankly – terrible job and lost the company in less than a year. Without Felicity’s help I’m fairly sure I would’ve run the company into the ground in the first _month_.”

“When you put it that way, it does sound fairly terrible,” Laurel conceded. She thought a minute. “Have you considered manual labour? Flipping burgers? A job in the mailroom?”

Oliver groaned. “Yes,” he admitted. “I’m having motivation issues.”

She considered him. “You could always be a male escort,” she suggested. “Strictly daytime, since your nights are already so busy. You’ve got the face for it. And the body. You could make a lot of money.”

Oliver felt his neck grow hot. “Think I’d prefer flipping burgers, actually.”

Laurel laughed lightly and laid her hand on his arm. “Good. I wasn’t serious.”

Laurel had to leave for work shortly after that, so she thanked him for seeing her father and they parted ways. Oliver spent the early part of that evening in the second lair, but he was still grounded because of his shoulder. Dig and Roy put a stop to a couple of meth dealers down near the port, but it was a quiet night and they returned not too long afterwards so everyone called it a night and headed home even though it wasn’t midnight yet.

When he got back to the apartment, Slade wasn’t there. Oliver felt his breath catch in his throat as he checked each room methodically for the other man, turning on all the lights in case he missed him in the dark.

But Slade was absent.

Oliver swore colourfully under his breath and was about to leave the apartment again and go in search of him when he realised he had no idea where to start. Cursing his stupidity under his breath – what was he _thinking_ , trusting that man not to disappear? – he sat down on the couch and tried to work out what to do next.

He considered calling Felicity, asking her to go to the lair and pull up traffic camera feeds, then reconsidered. She couldn’t know. He couldn’t tell her that Slade was still alive. By doing this, he’d betrayed every single person he knew, and Oliver wasn’t entirely sure how Felicity would react if she found out.

He couldn’t risk it.

That meant enlisting the aid of Dig was out, too.

So, then, he could use Felicity’s computers without her. Only, she would _know_. She _always_ knew.

Okay, then what? The Bratva were out of the question. Amanda Waller was too. Damn, he’d made too many enemies lately.

That just left him with heading into the city and wandering around on foot, hoping to run into Slade on a random off chance. It would be like hunting a needle in a haystack, particularly now that Slade was sound of mind and could keep himself under control. The man wasn’t about to go drawing attention to himself.

Oliver leant back on the couch, stifling a groan, when there came a creak on the landing outside the door to the apartment. Oliver tensed, the door opened, and Slade stepped inside. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses, even though it was nearly midnight, and one of Oliver’s hoodies was drawn up over his head.

Slade paused. “You’re home early,” he noted, closing the door and kicking off his – also borrowed – shoes.

Oliver stared at him. “Where _were_ you?”

Slade shrugged. “Kid, seriously. Do you honestly expect me to stay in this apartment for the rest of my life?” he asked. “I was going stir crazy. I went for a run rather than knocking more holes in the walls.” Then he added sarcastically: “You didn’t seem to like the last ones much.”

Oliver sighed in relief as Slade chucked the sunglasses on the counter, pulled his eye-patch out of his pocket and slipped it on. He watched Slade closely for the next few minutes, afraid that he’d offended the man, but Slade seemed largely unconcerned as he poured himself a glass of water then padded off to shower, and they both retired to bed on good terms.

Oliver dreamt of fire and ashes and blood and woke up coughing with Slade rubbing circles on his back. They had hot cocoa – that seemed to be a thing they did now in the middle of the night – and then Slade went back into the other room and Oliver lay curled up on his side on the couch.

He couldn’t get back to sleep, though. His heart was racing. He felt like he’d been breathing smoke. So after a while he got up, flicked on the light and started trying to read one of Slade’s books.

He couldn’t focus, though. He tried for nearly forty minutes but when he realised he was reading the same passage for the ninth time he slammed the book shut and dropped it on the floor with a frustrated sigh. In an effort to calm himself down he opened one of the windows to breath the night air, but the smell of traffic pollution wasn’t helping, so he closed it again and paced for a time.

Finally, over an hour after he woke up, he approached the doorway to Slade’s room. He hesitated in the doorway, working up the nerve to knock.

Slade beat him to it. “What do you want, kid?” he asked gruffly.

Oliver could see his eye glittering in the darkness.

“I—” Oliver began, then stopped, not certain how to continue. “I was wondering… Can I come in here tonight? I’ll sleep on the floor. Please.”

Slade grunted, and for a moment Oliver didn’t know if it was acquiescence or denial, but then he sat up and patted the cot beside him in invitation. “You’re welcome to join me, if you like,” he offered. “Like we used to before Shado, when it was cold. If you think that’ll help.”

Oliver deliberated, his fear of the monster inside Slade warring with the terror of being alone for another second. The idea of being alone won out, driving him into the room. Slade moved over and Oliver laid down beside him, his heart fluttering wildly. But when Slade wrapped his arm around his waist and pulled him into a hug and told him to relax, Oliver found the tension flowing out of his back and shoulders and the weight on his chest lifting.

“You’re all right, Oliver. You’re safe here. I promise,” Slade murmured in his ear, and somehow, Oliver believed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we are, here we are, i'm off to watch tv now bye
> 
> maybe one more tonight. if not then tomorrow morning first thing (NZ time)


	9. Eight: Misery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slade examines Oliver's moods.

**Chapter Eight:** Misery

There was something wrong with Oliver, and Slade could attribute only some of it to his own actions. When the kid was not out playing vigilante at night time, when he was not moving, _always moving_ , he fell still. More than once, Slade found him sitting not on the couch, but behind it, staring into the middle distance. Over the following week, Slade began to recognise new patterns in his moods.

Sometimes he was angry, frustrated mostly by his lack of progress locating Thea but occasionally he seemed irritated about other things, too. He would silently seethe about something and Slade learned not to press him when his eyebrows were drawn together and his lips thinned like that or risk getting his head bitten off. He paced, he snarled, and he limped.

Other times, he was melancholy. That was when he sat the stillest, his back pressed against the rear of the couch, staring up through the ceiling at something Slade couldn’t see if he looked. More than once, Slade heard him sniffling quietly. What, precisely, he was so sad about Slade didn’t know – whenever he asked he got sworn at. Oliver didn’t seem to mind if he was around while he was mourning quietly behind the couch, but he did care if Slade talked to him, so Slade learned to be quiet when Oliver was in this mood.

Then there was the slightly manic mood that overtook him, often times after a successful mission, where he was coming down off the high of adrenaline and saving lives and everything seemed right in the world for once. Then Oliver was lively and animated and would chat about anything and he seemed almost like the kid from back on the island.

His fourth mood was perhaps the one Slade found most disturbing.

It was also the mood he slipped into most often, and the hardest to recognise because it mimicked the other three. It was a state of acute anxiety that was often accompanied by restlessness, rapid breathing and snippy language. If Slade wasn’t careful, he would write it off as Oliver being angry. Except that when Oliver was angry he didn’t startle at sounds from the neighbours down the hall like that, or flinch so visibly at the sound of a car backfiring in the street.

Sometimes it seemed Oliver was afraid all the time. He was afraid of Slade, he was afraid of being alone, he was afraid of leaving the apartment and he was afraid of staying in one place.

“I just want to go home,” Oliver mumbled one night after a particularly gruelling nightmare, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes.

“Where’s home, kid?” Slade asked.

“I don’t know. Somewhere safe,” Oliver replied.

That spoke volumes. Oliver hadn’t been like this back on the island. He’d been useless and he knew when to run the Hell away and he’d always had that idiotic streak that meant he ran towards danger rather than away if he thought it meant doing the right thing. But he hadn’t been afraid during their down time. Slade had often chastised him for not paying enough attention, for being too relaxed, because the island had been covered in dangers – from Fyers’ men to wolves to mines to poisonous plants to mosquitos carrying malaria. Everything and anything could’ve killed him, but Oliver had been oblivious.

Now he was hyper-vigilant, constantly aware of everything. It was a stark difference to the kid Slade remembered.

Oliver no longer considered _anywhere_ safe, either. Not this apartment, not his childhood home, not the Foundry which he apparently hadn’t even returned to. Nowhere. Little wonder he never relaxed, but it was taxing them both.

Since that first night they shared the bed, Oliver had somehow ended up in Slade’s room every single night. He snuck in most nights while Slade was sleeping and Slade just found him on the floor in the morning, which said a lot about how much stealthier he’d gotten over the years, because he used to make about as much noise as a stampeding buffalo. Now he could move around without waking him.

Twice, though, he had been so disturbed by whatever bothered him at night time that he woke Slade up, and then they shared the cot again.

They were sharing a late brunch. Oliver had spent the first half of the night chasing down a kidnapper in a wealthier part of town, only returning a little after two o’clock that morning, and Slade was reading the newspaper.

There was an article on the most recent Arrow victim, who was in the hospital under police custody having been shot through the thigh.

“You don’t kill anymore,” Slade said.

It was a trend he’d noticed a long time ago but not commented on. When the Hood first cropped up in Starling City, he’d left a string of bodies behind him a mile long. After the Undertaking, he’d dropped Count Vertigo and everyone else had been non-fatally wounded.

“No,” Oliver said. He wasn’t really eating this morning. Just pushing his eggs around his plate somewhat listlessly. It’d been a bad morning – Oliver woke up screaming at five o’clock and hadn’t gone back to sleep after that. Slade knew. He’d lain beside him, feeling him tremble every so often, until daylight crept into the other room. “I don’t.”

“Why?”

Oliver frowned, dropping his fork onto the table. “Do you remember when I told you about Tommy?”

“Merlyn’s son?” Slade asked.

“My best friend,” Oliver replied. He said it softly, but the correction was there. Slade wasn’t to speak about Tommy and Malcolm Merlyn together in the same sentence again.

Slade nodded. “Okay. What about Tommy?”

“When he found out about what I did, he called me a murderer,” Oliver said. “I hadn’t seen it that way before. But I still could’ve stopped all of those people without killing them. I didn’t _have_ to take their lives. But I did anyway, because it was easier. And that _did_ make me a murderer.” He paused, looking not at Slade but at some point over his right shoulder. “Then, when he was dying in the ruins of CNRI during the earthquake, I lied to his face and told him I hadn’t killed his father.”

“You hadn’t,” Slade pointed out.

“I didn’t know that at the time. I stabbed him in the chest with an arrow. He was as good as dead. Lying to Tommy like that…”

“I get it, kid,” Slade said. “So that’s why you didn’t kill me?”

“I wanted to,” Oliver replied, not meeting his eye. “If I could have, I probably would’ve. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. And then we gave you the cure and I still just couldn’t. Not again. It hurt too much the first time.”

Slade considered that. “I’m glad.”

“But I thought—” Oliver started.

“Changed my mind,” Slade said. “I’d rather stick around for now.”

Oliver frowned, clearly confused. “What about… you know?”

“Shado?” Slade asked. “I miss her. I miss her every day. But that was five years ago. It’s time I moved on.”

“Moving on can be difficult sometimes,” Oliver murmured.

Slade figured he knew a lot about that. He seemed to have lost a lot of people in his life so far. “I know, kid,” he said softly. “I know.”

He went out for a bit, to buy some necessities like milk, eggs, more cocoa and marshmallows and sugar, and meat and vegetables, using money he took from Oliver’s wallet. When he got back, he thought Oliver had gone out himself until he found the kid sitting in the corner in the cell, his head pressed against the wall, his eyes shut.

He almost looked like he could have been asleep, if he wasn’t so tense.

Slade wondered what the best course of action would be, feeling his heart aching peculiarly. In the end, he put the perishables away in the refrigerator, left the rest of the groceries in their plastic bag on the kitchen floor by the sink, and headed into the other room to sit with the kid. Oliver did not acknowledge him when he crouched down on the floor beside him.

They sat like that for a long time before Oliver spoke.

“Sometimes I wish it would all just end,” he said. “I _hate_ this.”

“Hate what?” Slade asked.

He seemed to go off on a tangent without really answering Slade’s question. “ _Shēngcún_. I should’ve died on the island. Yao Fei should’ve let me. Instead he taught me to survive. I don’t want to anymore. I’m tired, Slade. I’m so, so… just tired.”

Slade felt cold.

That evening, Oliver didn’t come home. Slade found out from watching the news the next morning that he was in hospital with a gunshot wound to the stomach that had required surgery, the result of an apparent “mugging” in the Glades. Surely everyone knew by now that Oliver Queen was broke and not a worthy mugging target? No, Oliver had been wounded as the Arrow, because he wasn’t quick enough. And Slade was fairly certain that he wasn’t quick enough because he wasn’t even trying to keep himself safe anymore.

Slade stood behind the couch, watching the news report, and wondered if Oliver had been this reckless when he was fighting him.

He came to the conclusion had been. What the Hell else would possess the kid to go up against a supersoldier in hand-to-hand combat when he was half-crippled? Oliver had no regard for his own safety at all.

Oliver was going to get himself killed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm done for the night.
> 
> more tomorrow


	10. Nine: Caring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver is in hospital. Peritonitis sucks.

**Chapter Nine:** Caring

Oliver had been fortunate enough to never take a shot to the gut before. He had never had the displeasure of infection-induced peritonitis before, either. The fever, pain, nausea and vomiting were extremely unpleasant and enough to keep even the most stalwart of visitors away from his bedside for the two weeks he suffered before the antibiotics finally kicked the infection. Well, actually, that wasn’t quite true.

Dig and Felicity visited for a few minutes every day, just to say hello and give him the rundown on their hunt for Thea and everything else that was going on in the city. Laurel came by a couple of times when she was visiting her father, but she didn’t come back again after Oliver puked bile on her shoes. Entirely accidentally. The entire episode had been equally mortifying and disgusting for all parties involved.

Roy stopped by once to apologise for not seeing the guy who shot Oliver sooner, since he’d been out in the field with him that night. Oliver forgave him, and hadn’t seen him since.

His mother came to see him every other day or so, but didn’t stay long. Just long enough to look pained. She was the mayor, after all, and she was in charge of cleaning up the mess that was Starling City after Slade’s army tore through it.

Sin came by, said hello, then left again.

Detective Lance swung by in a wheelchair a couple of times, being pushed by a nurse, and they commiserated until Oliver’s anti-nausea medication wore off and then Lance would be wheeled back to his own room while Oliver tried not to vomit his guts up again.

On his fourth day out of the ICU, Oliver got a visitor in the afternoon that he wasn’t expecting. Slade. Out of the apartment, dressed almost like a homeless person from the Glades, wearing a bulky coat that hid his build over a hoodie with the hood up and sunglasses that hid his eyes. He was being accompanied by a rather irritable looking nurse who Oliver didn’t recognise. She wasn’t one of his regulars, who he had come to know by face if not name, which meant she belonged to a different part of the hospital.

“Mr. Queen,” the nurse said. “This man – ah, Mr…”

“Wintergreen,” Slade supplied.

“Mr. Wintergreen,” the nurse continued. “Says that you’re expecting him to visit today? Is this correct? I wouldn’t have thought—”

“That’s correct,” Oliver said quickly. “Hey Billy. It’s good to see you. Have a seat.”

The nurse threw one last disgruntled look at Slade and then left, after reminding them that visiting hours ended at six o’clock.

“Wintergreen?” Oliver asked.

Slade shrugged. “I was trying to think of an alias to give them that you would recognise in case they sent someone ahead to ask if it was okay for me to see you. Thought about using Ivo or Fyers, too, but that didn’t feel right, somehow. And I didn’t really think I’d pass for a Yao Fei. I’m not short enough.”

“Fair enough,” Oliver said. “But the man who _tortured_ me?”

“Worked, didn’t it?” Slade asked. “You played along.”

Oliver cocked his head. “What are you doing here, though, Slade?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Oliver gaped at him. “No. Do you have any idea how dangerous this is right now? What if Felicity—”

“Felicity visited you this morning. She won’t be back again until tomorrow,” Slade said, waving a hand dismissively.

“How long have you been staking this place out?” Oliver asked.

“Three days,” Slade replied. “I wasn’t going to take any chances with getting caught.”

“But you came anyway?” He didn’t understand. Why would Slade risk coming here when he knew he might end up in the custody of A.R.G.U.S in some remote prison? It was stupid and unsafe and didn’t make any sense.

Slade smirked at him. “What can I say? You’ve grown on me. The apartment’s pretty lonely without you there, kid.”

“I thought you thought attachments were dangerous,” Oliver said.

“They are,” Slade said. “Hasn’t stopped me in the past though and it’s not about to stop me now. And you never seemed to care either way.”

“I do care,” Oliver murmured. He’d promised himself to never be with someone he truly cared for, to keep them out of harm’s way. “That was a valuable lesson, Slade.”

Slade shook his head. “It was stupid. You should forget it. That sort of thinking just leads to jealousy and regret. Trust me.”

Oliver looked at him, searching for the truth in his face, but it was hard to tell whether he was being sincere or not because of the sunglasses. He sighed and dropped his gaze and a moment later was wracked with an agonising stomach cramp. Slade left when he started retching.

He came back the next afternoon at the same time, though, and the next, and the next. Oliver wasn’t allowed solid food, but he brought mint-flavoured chewing gum.

“Chewing gum will help,” Slade said mysteriously, but didn’t bother explaining how gum could possibly help peritonitis.

Oliver asked him where he was getting money for food and other necessities. Slade told him he was working part-time mornings down at the docks, helping with unloading the cargo vessels.

“I’m an adult, kid. I can take care of myself.”

By the end of the second week, Slade was sticking around for a couple of hours at a time. If Oliver was in pain, or nauseous, he didn’t push conversation. Instead, he tended to bring a book with him and sit and read quietly while Oliver catnapped. He stopped leaving if Oliver yakked, and instead held the bag for him to hurl into and rubbed circles on his back as he sat, trembling, afterwards. Oliver began to look forward to the hour when the other man would arrive, and dread the hour when he had to leave again, more so than with any of his other visitors.

During his third week in hospital, the infection went down. Oliver had another surgery to close the wound, and by the end of the fourth week he was able to go home. Dig and Felicity picked him up. Felicity brought chocolates and flowers, and she hugged Oliver soundly before stepping back and frowning at him deeply.

“You’re really skinny,” she said.

“Yeah.” Oliver scratched the back of his head. His hair was beginning to grow out and he needed a haircut, badly. “I know. Three weeks on a liquid-only diet will do that to you.”

“We need to fatten you up again, then,” she decided immediately, before slipping her small hand into his. “So. It’s your first night out of hospital. Do you need Dig or I to stay with you in case you need anything?”

“No,” Oliver said immediately. “No. I’ll be fine on my own.”

Felicity and Diggle shared a concerned glance.

“Oliver,” Dig said. “It might be wiser to play it safe and not be on your own for the next few days.”

“I appreciate it, guys,” Oliver said, giving Felicity’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “I really do. But I just need a little time by myself. The nurses have been watching me twenty-four-seven for the past month and I don’t think you realise how little privacy you get when you’re essentially bedbound for that long.”

Felicity shivered. “Catheters,” she mumbled. “I can’t even imagine.”

“Exactly,” Oliver replied.

Oliver was reluctant to divulge the location of his apartment to them, so he had Dig drop him off several blocks away.

“You sure you can make it inside okay?” Diggle asked.

“I’m perfectly capable of walking, Dig. Didn’t get shot in my spine or legs or anything.”

He made it the rest of the way on foot. Slade was waiting for him, pacing the small living room impatiently.

The first thing Slade did was hug him. He smiled and crossed the room and embraced him, clapping him on the back. Then he stood back and looked him up and down and said: “Fuck, you’re a walking skeleton, kid. Good to see you on your own two feet, though. What do you want for dinner?”

They had chicken soup, because Oliver still wasn’t up to eating anything seriously heavy, and afterwards they curled up on the couch to watch an action movie together. Oliver was still on a lot of medication. Most of it made him sleepy. At some point during one of the talking scenes he dropped off, and when he woke up after the movie had ended he found his head was in Slade’s lap and Slade was gently running his fingers through his hair, staring at the blank screen of the television, which he’d turned off hours ago.

Oliver blinked in confusion.

“Slade?”

“Yeah, kid?” Slade said, looking down at him with an unreadable expression in his eye.

“What time is it?”

“Late,” was the reply.

Oliver got up and got changed for bed. When he’d brushed his teeth, he found that Slade had retired to the other room, and he felt an aching sense of loss in his chest. After only a moment of indecision he went to the doorway and stopped there, waiting to be invited in.

“Come on, then,” Slade said, immediately, and Oliver went to him.

Slade pressed a kiss to the back of his shoulder blade as they lay down, and Oliver froze. Then he thought a moment, realised he didn’t care, and snuggled against the other man’s side. It was, after all, much tamer than a lot of the things the two of them had done on the island when it was just the two of them and there was no other way to relieve their boredom in the long dark winter evenings than explore each other’s bodies.

He forced himself not to remember what happened on the _Amazo_. Slade hadn’t been himself then. He hadn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i lied before. this is my final chapter for tonight.


	11. Ten: Realisation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slade figures out that Oliver is the centre of his universe.

**Chapter Ten:** Realisation

Slade woke up half a dozen times that night. First because Oliver elbowed him in his sleep. Then they both startled awake when they heard gunshots from somewhere down the street, and as soon as Slade had drifted off again a police vehicle came screaming past with its siren on and lights flashing. Later, he got up because he had to pee – damn getting older, he was only _forty_ – and later still their neighbours upstairs started having a ferocious argument about whose turn it was to see to their squalling baby.

The baby had come along while Oliver was in the hospital. Slade hadn’t even known they had a pregnant neighbour. He didn’t know the neighbours at all. The first night he was woken up by a baby crying had been an unpleasant surprise, and since then he’d listened to the infant wailing at all hours of the day with gritted teeth and tried to ignore it.

Oliver looked at him in the dark of the room with wide, slightly wild eyes, and asked: “What is that?”

“The young woman next door popped one out while you were away,” Slade replied. “Little girl. Baby’s name’s Alana, I think. ‘Ally’ for short, anyway. They haven’t sorted out night time routines yet.”

They listened to the baby’s parents argue, and then her mother stalk across the floor above them.

“We might need to move,” Oliver noted. “It’s getting pretty noisy here.”

“Move where?” Slade asked.

“I have no idea.”

The sixth time Slade woke up, it was because he dreamed of Shado and the island. Dreaming of Shado and waking up next to Oliver was confusing and raised a lump in his throat that he had to swallow heavily. Then he looked at Oliver’s face, which was resting on his chest, and noticed the furrow between his brows, the anxious expression he wore even though he was asleep, the way his eyelids fluttered and he twitched and seemed to cringe. Quite without thinking about it, he began to card his fingers through Oliver’s hair, murmuring sweet nothings in his ear.

Oliver sighed, stretched, then relaxed and Slade lay awake the final hour or so until dawn, thinking.

He thought about the island. He thought about the months he had spent alone with Oliver, and the natural way he had slipped into the role of keeping an eye on the kid, making sure he didn’t die through some act of his own stupidity. He thought about how his life had quietly come to revolve around the useless, rich castaway who couldn’t even bring himself to kill but would cross an island of hostile mercenaries on his own to find medicine for Slade when he was burning with fever from the infected gunshot wound.

He considered the way their relationship changed when Shado joined them, and how things fell apart after she was gone again. Although it was painful, and his recollections of the period in time after the Mirakuru but before he turned on Oliver were hazy and disjointed at best, he examined them in detail.

And he realised that from the very moment Oliver Queen had stumbled into his life all those years ago, his entire existence had revolved around him. Even when he was planning the kid’s downfall and eventual death, he’d still been fixated entirely _him_. He loved Shado. He always would. Oliver was… something else.

Now that the Mirakuru was gone, Slade had slipped almost into the same role as he had before. Oliver was different. He was no longer the idle child he had been, the reluctant youth that Slade had to bully into action time and time again until he spontaneously acted of his own accord when something offended his deep-seated sense of justice. He was older, somewhat wiser, infinitely deadlier, and perpetually restless. He carried with him a sort of anxiety, a constant wariness, paranoia that went beyond what was necessary for survival in a dangerous situation. Slade didn’t want to admit it, but he was beginning to wonder if Oliver had some sort of post-traumatic stress.

He’d seen it before, in other people he knew, and it would make a lot of sense. Oliver didn’t deserve that, though.

Whatever the case, it seemed to Slade that the kid was almost as bad at looking out for himself now as he had been back on the island. If for different reasons. Before, he didn’t know how. Now, he didn’t care enough about his own safety to really bother.

Oliver slept late that morning. Slade assumed it was the pain medication he was on, because he woke up groggy and almost hungover at nearly nine o’clock. By that point, Slade had already got up, had breakfast, coffee and a shower, been down to the local convenience store and bought the newspaper, done the crossword, and come back to sit with him quietly.

“Hey,” Oliver said, blinking sleepily at him, after stirring for several minutes.

“Morning,” Slade replied. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“You gonna do everything for me from now on or something?” Oliver asked.

Slade smiled indulgently. “Only until you’re better. Then you can do it yourself. There’s no excuse for laziness.”

“Guess not,” Oliver said, rolling over onto his belly and burying his face in the pillow. Slade could see the face of the red dragon he’s tattooed onto the kid’s shoulder, and he felt a pang of guilt and remembrance. Tentatively, he reached out to trace its outline.

“I’m truly sorry for this, Oliver,” Slade murmured.

Oliver didn’t say anything. He was relaxed, though, and breathing slowly and deeply. Slade almost wondered if he’d gone back to sleep. Then Oliver muttered: “’S fine. Helps me not forget.”

“Forget what?”

“Things.”

Slade didn’t push him further. Instead, he said: “Right. What did you want to eat again?”

Over a somewhat boring breakfast of oatmeal – “Doctor’s orders, it’s good for the bowels, apparently,” – Slade asked Oliver for the combination to the safe where he was keeping the Deathstroke outfit, and Slade’s swords. Oliver gave him a fleeting glance of alarm.

“Why?”

“I’m not going to go and kill someone,” Slade responded. “I want to know. In case you ever need help.”

“But…” Oliver said. “What if—”

“I get seen? Kid, there were dozens of men in masks running around the city a couple of months ago. You could’ve missed one or two. There are such things as copycats as well.”

Oliver frowned, stirring his oatmeal with his spoon. “Why would one of _your_ soldiers spontaneously turn up and help _me_ though?”

Slade shrugged. “As long as I’m not caught, it doesn’t matter. And I won’t get caught. I’m good enough not to be.”

“You sound pretty confident about that,” Oliver said, sounding a little dubious.

“You _do_ remember who taught you in the first place, don’t you?” Slade replied.

Oliver ducked his head. “Point taken. You’re not crazy now, anyway.”

“No. I’m not,” Slade agreed. “So. The combination. What is it, Oliver? So I can come save your sorry ass if and when I need to.”

Oliver told him. While he finished his breakfast, Slade opened the safe and checked his gear. He was somewhat pleased to discover that Oliver had been careful when he removed his armour, and had refrained from damaging it or simply cutting it off of him. He had also taken the time to clean his blades, and even sharpen them.

“Thank you, kid,” Slade said.

“I couldn’t… I just…” Oliver said, then shook his head and got up to wash his plate in the sink, evidently not having the words to explain what he wanted to. Slade figured he knew what the kid wanted to say anyway.

They went out to lunch together. It was a sunny day, which was convenient, because it gave Slade an excuse to wear sunglasses in public. Oliver wore a ball cap and kept his head down, for the most part, so that no one recognised him as the mayor’s son or former billionaire. Instead, they were just two friends hanging out together.

Later, when they were in the privacy of their apartment again, listening to the baby upstairs crying because it needed its diaper changed, Oliver curled up against Slade’s side on the couch, and Slade took his hand and interlaced their fingers. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Oliver traced his knuckles with his thumb, a contemplative expression on his face.

He still couldn’t bring himself to ask what he’d done.

He didn’t know what to do, either, because he’d come to the conclusion that he loved the kid. Possibly had loved him from the start. And he didn’t know how to make it better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kinda busy today so this might be the only chapter until tomorrow except i've got the dentist tomorrow so i'm not sure how much i'll get written then either.
> 
> we'll see though. we shall see.


	12. Eleven: Don't lie to me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver wants to know why Slade keeps following him out at night.

**Chapter Eleven:** Don’t lie to me

The SCPD and the local news had both noticed that the Arrow had been out of the game lately. So had the Starling City underworld. Crime rates had risen markedly over the five weeks that the vigilante was off the streets, in spite of Roy and Dig going out almost every night in his stead. Oliver worked hard to get back to fighting shape.

Felicity worried he was pushing himself too hard too soon and that he would damage himself irreparably. She and Dig shared concerned glances when they thought Oliver wasn’t looking. He saw them, though, and pointedly ignored them. He’d spent far too long slacking in hospital and he needed to get back out there, doing his job. His real job, not the job as a barista that he acquired at a café downtown.

Laurel started joining them in the second lair. Which they still hadn’t managed to name something better. She was determined to take up as the Canary where her sister left off. Oliver wasn’t going to stop her.

And while Oliver was out in the mornings serving coffee during the work rush, Slade kept doing casual part-time work at the docks. At some point he’d picked up a cheap Android phone somewhere, and he often texted Oliver, who entered him in his phone under “ _William W._ ” for simplicity’s sake. Not a name any of his friends would immediately associate with Slade, but close enough to their shared experiences that he wouldn’t forget.

Money-wise, they were scraping by. Oliver wasn’t about to go begging to his mother or Walter, however. He still hadn’t worked out how to regain control of Queen Consolidated, which was a problem that lingered at the back of his mind at all times. Felicity had managed to get back her old job in the QC IT department, which was great, and Dig was working security at QC now, so they still had their foot in the door and knew roughly what was going on in the company even if Oliver wasn’t actively there anymore.

It was a lot harder being a vigilante on a budget than it was being a vigilante with nearly unlimited funds. Money had to be carefully set aside for medical supplies, the replacement of equipment that got busted either during training or in the field, or was lost in some other fashion either because it was implicated in a crime and had to be discarded or because it was just… lost, as well as things like upgrades for their digital gear, gas and travel, and the rainy day fund.

No one quite knew what the rainy day fund was for. But they had one. Just in case.

It wasn’t just Oliver contributing. Although he objected, stridently, Felicity, Diggle and Laurel were putting forward certain portions of their weekly pay checks to keep the operation running. So was Slade, through Oliver. And even Roy paid for little things, like footing the bill for the odd dinner in the lair, though everyone knew he didn’t make a lot in the first place. And though it pained him, Oliver had Felicity skim the bank accounts of several one percenters from his father’s list, not taking enough to be noticed, but enough to supplement things and keep the water and electricity on in the lair another month.

The first night Oliver returned to the street, he didn’t notice he was being tailed.

The second night, he felt like he was being watched several times, so that the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and he paused to look around and make sure he was safe on more than one occasion.

The third night he saw the flash of a heel or the tail of a coat out of the corner of his eye.

The fourth night, Slade stood out in the open for several seconds on the rooftop opposite and Oliver got a good long look at him before he waved and ducked out of sight. He hadn’t been wearing the Deathstroke outfit. He hadn’t even appeared to be obviously armed in any way that Oliver could discern. He was just wearing a hoodie and a baseball cap pulled low.

When Oliver returned to the apartment later, fuming, Slade was already there, dressed in his pyjamas and socks, wrapped in a blanket on the couch and watching television like he’d been there the entire evening.

“Why are you following me?” Oliver asked. “What if someone saw you!”

“I was careful,” Slade replied.

Oliver frowned. “Why, though? What are you doing, Slade?”

Slade finally looked up at him, flicking off the television with the remote and tossing it negligently onto the other cushion. He was scowling. “I don’t trust you to not get yourself killed,” he said, frankly.

Oliver froze. “What?”

“You’re trying to die,” Slade said, and he sounded angry.

“No. No, I—” Oliver started.

Slade stood, shrugging off the blanket, and took a step towards him. Suddenly, he seemed a lot taller. “Don’t _lie_ to me, Oliver,” he growled. “Don’t you fucking lie to me again.”

Oliver shrank away from him, feeling a sudden, irrational terror welling up in his chest because he hadn’t seen Slade look this angry since the Mirakuru and he was remembering those nights on the _Amazo_ even though he didn’t want to, he really didn’t want to.

“I—” he tried again.

“ _Don’t_ make excuses, Oliver,” Slade snarled, taking another step forward. Oliver stepped back and found his back against the wall with nowhere else to go. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know what to do – should he fight? Slade closed the distance between them, so that they were standing only a foot or so apart.

“I know what you’re doing,” Slade continued. “And I won’t let you do it. All right? So don’t you come back here, angry, because I _won’t_ fucking well let you get yourself killed.”

Then Slade blinked and looked at him, and jumped away as if stung – but Oliver hadn’t touched him. He was still pressed against the wall. He hadn’t even _moved_.

“Shit, kid,” Slade said, his expression softening, becoming mournful. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

“I don’t… I don’t know,” Oliver replied, still trying to process everything that had just happened.

Slade was thinking. Oliver could see it. He didn’t know what the other man wanted, his heart was beating way too fast and his chest felt tight and uncomfortable. He needed to get away, be by himself for a time, so, keeping his back to the wall, he slipped away towards the other room. The lights were off in there, but that was okay. He preferred the darkness to daylight most of the time anyway.

Slade didn’t follow him, so he headed into the bathroom, showered and brushed his teeth, then pulled one of the blankets off the cot and curled up in the corner of the room furthest from the door, where it felt safest.

Slade didn’t come in for another two hours. Oliver knew because he lay awake, fighting the tightness in his chest and the urge to pant. When he did, he ignored Oliver to start with, just went about his night time routine as if nothing was different. It was only when he’d been to the bathroom and cleaned his teeth and read his book for twenty minutes with his glasses perched on the end of his nose before flicking off the lamp on the bedside table that he finally looked up to acknowledge Oliver.

“You realise why I don’t want you to get yourself killed, don’t you Oliver?” he asked.

“Same reasons as everyone else, I suppose,” Oliver guessed.

Slade sighed. “And what are those reasons?”

“Why are you speaking to me like I’m some sort of idiot, Slade?” Oliver said, sitting up and hugging his knees to his chest.

“I’m trying to get you to see something. Now list the reasons why people don’t want you dead.”

“I don’t know. I guess because they care about me?”

“Got it in one,” Slade said. “They care about you.”

“I was dead for five years, Slade. They managed fine without me then,” Oliver objected. “No one really needs me. They don’t even need the Arrow, for that matter. Roy and Dig and Felicity make an effective team even if I’m not there.”

“Who do you think holds the team together, Oliver?” Slade asked, then continued before Oliver could answer him. “Anyway, I knew you were alive the whole time.”

“You hated me though.”

Slade hummed thoughtfully. “Sometimes I’m not sure I did, to be honest,” he said.

“That was hate, Slade. Nothing else,” Oliver muttered, examining his own hands because he couldn’t meet Slade’s gaze any longer.

“You remember better than I do,” Slade said, shrugging. “But I don’t hate you now, Oliver. Anything but.”

What was that supposed to mean? “What are you saying?” Oliver asked.

“What do you _think_ it means, kid?” Slade replied.

Oliver shook his head. “I – I don’t know. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Slade regarded him silently for a long minute. “If you’re sure,” he said.

Oliver didn’t sleep that night.

 _I don’t hate you. Anything but. What do you think it means?_ The words bounced around in his head, keeping him awake, haunting him as he sat in the corner on the floor. When he got up the following day he was gritty-eyed and irritable. Slade took one look at him and produced a cup of hot, strong coffee which he pressed gently into his hands.

 _Don’t lie to me. Don’t you fucking lie to me_.

Oliver understood. Slade had been saying something else. Something that felt like a hot knife slipped between the ribs when he realised it.

_Don’t die on me, Oliver._

_Please don’t die_.

But he was tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still trying to work out if i wanna write a sex scene or not. i'm fucking terrible at writing sex so prolly not but i don't know.
> 
> if we're going there, it'll be in the next few chapters (1-3)
> 
> last chapter for today. not sure how much i'll get done tomorrow guys because like i said i have to go to the dentist.


	13. Twelve: Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened on the Amazo.

**Chapter Twelve:** Truth

“You’re afraid of me sometimes. I want you to tell me what I did.”

Oliver, who was halfway through the front door of the apartment after a night of busting an arms deal, froze. Later, he would suppose he did a rather good imitation of a deer caught in headlights. At the time he wasn’t thinking about deer at all. Rather, his mind went completely and utterly blank, his muscles rigid, and then he turned on his heel and walked straight back out the door again.

He heard Slade sigh in frustration behind him and get to his feet to give chase. “Oliver,” he called. “Come _back_.”

Oliver turned down the hall and headed for the stairwell.

“For fuck’s sake, kid,” Slade growled, as Oliver darted upwards, heading for the roof. “ _Oliver_!” His irritation was evident in his voice.

Oliver brushed past the young father who lived upstairs coming down. He had recently been moved onto night shifts at the convenience store. He cast a startled glance at Oliver, looked over his shoulder at Slade, and said quickly: “Hey man, are you all right?”

Oliver ignored him, just kept heading upwards.

“Kid!” Slade snapped. “Where the Hell are you going to go at this time of night?”

Oliver could hear Slade’s footsteps on the stairs below him. He continued upwards and burst through the door onto the roof. The cool night air was soothing. It reminded him of the island, in a way, although the island had smelled like growing things, grass and conifer and fragrant shrub, while the air here hung heavy with the pollution of million cars’ exhausts. It was the openness of the night more than anything that settled his jangled nerves.

Oliver sat down on the roof overlooking the street.

Slade’s tread was light as he came up behind him. Oliver tensed, not entirely sure what he expected.

“Come on, kid,” Slade said, crouching down next to him. “You’ve got to tell me. I _need_ to know.”

“Why?” Oliver asked. “What good will it do? It happened five years ago. You don’t even remember, I don’t think.”

“That’s why. Because I _don’t_ remember and you _do_ ,” Slade replied. “And if it still hurts, it still matters. I know it still hurts you, kid. You have nightmares about me.”

Oliver glanced at him sharply. “You know about those?”

“You talk in your sleep, Oliver,” Slade said. “And even when you don’t, you act differently around me after one. I can tell.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t realised he was being that obvious. “I’ll try to stop,” he promised.

Slade huffed in annoyance. “Will you just tell me what I did already, Oliver?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Oliver said. He didn’t want to think about it, either. He just wanted to pretend the entire thing never happened. It was easier that way. He turned his head to look towards the skyscrapers downtown.

“Please Oliver,” Slade said.

Slade never said please. He always demanded things outright. Boldly, loudly, with little or no room for negotiation. Oliver had learned to argue back. Oliver bit his lip.

“I don’t want you to hate me,” he said.

There was a pause. “Why the Hell would I hate you?” Slade asked, after a moment.

“For being weak. For not fighting back.”

“Fighting back against _what_ , kid?”

Oliver took a deep breath. “You, Slade. On the _Amazo_. Do you remember the promise you made?”

“Vaguely,” Slade replied. “Ivo had a gun. I gave it to him, I think. So he could demonstrate on you what he did to Shado. And I cut off his hand?” Oliver nodded in confirmation, so Slade continued. “You tried to reason with me. But… you didn’t plead for your life, did you? You were worried about me. And when I cut off Ivo’s hand, you asked why I didn’t just kill you. I – I promised that you wouldn’t die until you’d known the complete despair I had.”

“Yes,” Oliver said. “That’s right. What else?” He needed to know – he had to know what Slade already knew he’d done.

Slade touched his shoulder gently, over the place where Oliver’s – Shado’s – tattoo was. “I marked you,” he said. “But that wasn’t all, was it? No… I did other things. Didn’t I?”

“There was the electricity,” Oliver said, not looking at him. “Do you remember that?”

Another pause. “… Yes. I wanted something.”

“A man named Hendrick, who had made it onto the island with the rest of the prisoners Sara freed. You threatened to kill me if he wasn’t delivered within an hour. I don’t think you would have done it, though,” Oliver said. “It would’ve meant going back on your word almost straight away. Even under the effects of Mirakuru, you always were a man of your word.”

“I don’t actually find that reassuring,” Slade said. “I had the men beat you.”

“You did.”

“But you’ve taken beatings before and since… Hell, I used to whip your sorry ass on the island on a regular basis and call it ‘training.’ Never as bad as that, mind you. But still. I—” Suddenly, Slade froze. Then he shook his head, and said: “I didn’t inject you with Mirakuru too, did I?”

“I think you would probably have noticed if you had,” Oliver said.

“True,” Slade admitted. “Am I going to have to play twenty questions with you until I get it right, or will you just tell me already, Oliver?”

Oliver frowned, struggling to come up with a way to word what he wanted to say, what Slade wanted to know.

“On the _Amazo_ you tortured me, like Billy did, except you used electricity and didn’t leave any scars like he did. So you marked me with a tattoo to remember it by instead. But you still didn’t think I was ‘despairing enough.’ So you had the men leave and lock the door behind them.”

Oliver watched Slade’s face go, quite suddenly, pale in the light of the street lamps. He wished there was an easier way to explain this, but he wasn’t sure _how_. And Slade _wanted_ to know, for whatever reason. Oliver steeled himself, summoned his courage, and continued to attempt to recount what had happened, even as his heart thudded painfully and his palms started sweating.

“We did that sort of thing before, remember? When it was just us and no one else. I knew what to expect. So I… I lay still and just, you know, took it. You were rougher than usual, though. Think it made you even more angry that I wasn’t struggling or anything.”

Slade swore darkly. “Kid…”

“No, it’s—” Oliver started.

“If you say it’s fucking ‘okay’ because of the Mirakuru, you’re _wrong_ ,” Slade growled. “I – I can’t – I’m sorry, Oliver. No wonder you tried to kill me.”

“Should’ve cured you back then,” Oliver muttered.

“Are you even listening to me, kid? _I don’t blame you_. Hell, you can take a couple of fingers and one of my feet, too, if you want. That’s be the least I deserve. Not just an _eye_.”

“I don’t _want_ to cut off your fingers!” Oliver objected. He wasn’t sure how that even equated in Slade’s mind anyway. One night of undesired fucking did not equal an eye, a foot and two fingers. But then, he’d never actually been that crash hot at mathematics anyway.

“Good, because they’re useful and I need them.” Slade sighed. “What are we going to do, Oliver?”

“I don’t know.”

They lapsed into an uneasy silence for a time. Then Slade said: “Can I touch you?”

Oliver considered. “I – I guess so.”

He linked their hands, interlacing his fingers with Oliver’s. His hand was warm and large. He had calluses on his palms. They felt rough against Oliver’s skin, but familiar. Not quite safe, but almost. Oliver reminded himself that Slade was a good man, with a good heart, and that the Mirakuru was gone. He might be rough around the edges, some of his ideas were peculiar, and he liked to solve problems in a distinctly final fashion, but he was still a good man.

That idea compounded itself when Slade gave his hand a squeeze and said: “You know, if I was anyone else, I would’ve killed me for doing that to you.”

Oliver took a moment to decipher that sentence, then laughed. “Thanks Slade, but I think I’d prefer it if you didn’t kill yourself.”

Slade chuckled too.

And that was when the police cruiser came around the corner and pulled up on the street directly outside their apartment building. They both stopped laughing to glance at each other warily.

“I might just—” Slade began.

“Get out of here,” Oliver finished for him.

Slade didn’t need to be told twice before he was dashing off across the rooftops, while Oliver headed downstairs to see why the police had suddenly turned up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry. my bad. an entire chapter of dialogue. but that had to happen for progression of other parts of the plot. slade and oliver needed to get their shit sorted and now they have so they aren't stuck anymore and yay!
> 
> dentist went fine, btw. i had an x-ray and they looked in my mouth and nothing done. funny the way you walk into the dentist's office feeling fine and you walk out and you've developed toothache in half your teeth.


	14. Thirteen: Confusion

**Chapter Thirteen:** Confusion

Detective Lance had been back at work for the past fortnight. He hadn’t been cleared to go out in the field by his doctors yet, so he was essentially stuck behind a desk all day, but it sure beat being stuck in a hospital room day-in day-out and he wasn’t complaining. There seemed to be an awful lot of paper to push even when he wasn’t in the field, and he had no idea who was generating it all.

The problem, he surmised as he sat at his desk with a cup of lukewarm coffee and chewed on the end of his ballpoint pen, was a combination of things. The numerous murders and other crimes committed by Slade Wilson’s marauding soldiers had created a backlog that the understaffed police station was still attempting to work through even now. Then there had been the deaths of the Police Commissioner, the DA _and_ the mayor all in one fell swoop. It left local law enforcement reeling.

The fact that the Arrow had dropped off the radar for over a month and the local criminals had taken gleeful advantage of his absence.

So Lance was on the graveyard shift and he had a mound of paperwork to do, because things had gone to Hell in a hand-basket lately. He got up periodically to get more coffee, or take a break in the break room with the other officers, or confer with one of his colleagues, before diving back into the paperwork.

It was about three o’clock in the morning when one of his workmates, Sergeant Garcia, came in from his patrol.

“I just had a weird callout,” Garcia said, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to Lance’s desk.

“Uh-huh,” Lance said, not particularly interested because he was going over a report on the GSR found under a suspect’s fingernails.

“You know that Queen kid, don’t you?”

Lance put the report down and looked at Garcia with renewed interest. “I do.”

“He’s downstairs giving a statement to one of our guys.”

“A statement? What? Why?”

“Darnedest thing, actually,” Garcia said. “He was assaulted.”

Lance raised his eyebrows disbelievingly. Oliver Queen was six-foot-one and _at least_ one-eighty pounds of pure muscle. He’d caught the kid fighting off an armed assailant before, during the Hood investigation, and even if he hadn’t intervened he had would’ve bet on Oliver coming out the winner of that particular tussle. He was also nearly completely certain the kid was actually the Arrow. The idea that anyone could get the jump on him seemed ludicrous, if Lance was honest with himself. And he made a habit of being honest with himself these days as part of his sobriety.

“I know, it’s a surprise,” Garcia replied. “But I was called out to a domestic disturbance in the Glades...”

“A domestic disturbance in the _Glades_?” Lance repeated, because this didn’t sound right at all. “We talking about the same Oliver Queen?”

“The one who was stranded on that island for five years,” Garcia said. “You know of any others?”

Lance shook his head. He guessed that Oliver had to have been living somewhere since he lost his company that family home of his was sold up, but somehow he hadn’t imagined the Glades.

“Anyway, I get to the address and the guy who called it in greets me on the street. He’s about to head out to work, so he can’t stick around. So, he tells me that the two men who live on the floor below him are having a spat – and not just any spat, it’s spilled out into the hallway and he’s half afraid that one of them is going to kill the other because he looks _furious_ and the other guy seems to be trying to run away, he’s got a nasty bruise on his face, a cut lip and he’s limping.”

Lance didn’t really like the tone this story was taking.

“He leaves for work and me and my partner go up to see who’s home and we’re met by Oliver Queen at the door and he looks like he tangled with a guy twice his size, and recently too, except he’s got these older bruises as well. Wouldn’t have believed it was him, but he showed us his ID and everything checks out,” Garcia said.

“Did you find out who he was arguing with?” Lance asked. “Who was he?”

“The guy he lives with. William Winters. Did you know Oliver Queen was gay?”

If Lance had been drinking coffee just then, he probably would have choked on it. As it was, he did a fairly effective job of choking on his own saliva. “You’ll have to repeat that, Sarge. Not sure I heard you right. This is the guy who dated _both_ my daughters. You sure you don’t mean roommate?”

Sergeant Garcia shook his head. “Not if their neighbours are to be believed, and Queen wasn’t denying it.”

Lance got to his feet. “You mind if I have a word with him?”

Garcia shrugged. “No. Go ahead. Might have better luck. He’s pretty tight-lipped about the whole incident, so I’m not sure how much luck you’ll have...”

“Where’d you say he was?” Lance asked.

“Downstairs, giving a statement to Detective Coleman.”

Lance headed off to find Det. Coleman and Oliver Queen.

He located them in one of the interview rooms. Garcia had been right – Queen looked like he’d been roughed up by someone enormous. Or perhaps someone hopped up on that serum Slade’s soldiers had been on. Only, Lance was fairly certain the Arrow and Sara’s League of Assassin comrades had managed to eliminate all of them.

So then, who had gotten the better of Oliver Queen?

Coleman and Oliver both glanced up at him when he knocked on the interview room window, and Coleman immediately scowled. He knew about Lance’s deep-seated dislike for the Queen heir, and probably thought he was here to cause trouble.

“What do you want, Lance?” Coleman asked snippily when he answered the door.

Lance refused to let his temper raise to match Coleman’s, and instead said coolly: “You having any luck?”

“I won’t testify!” Oliver called from his seat at the interview table.

“No,” Coleman said.

“Can I try?”

Coleman glanced between Oliver and Lance, a muscle ticking in his jaw, before huffing in irritated surrender. “Fine. Be my guest.”

He stepped out of the room around Lance, who went and took his place opposite Oliver Queen.

Oliver regarded him seriously. “Hello Detective.”

“Oliver.” Lance inclined his head. “Care to tell me why you’re here tonight?”

Oliver frowned. “You don’t know already?”

“I’ve been hearing some pretty fantastical stories from my co-workers that I wasn’t sure I wanted to believe. Thought I might hear it from you instead. Give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“There’s a first time for everything, I guess,” Oliver muttered.

Lance laughed. “What can I say? I don’t hate you as much as I used to. Bonding over ice cream on the ward will do that to a relationship.”

“Funny the way that happens,” Oliver said.

Apart from being beat up, he looked better than he had the last time Lance had seen him. He’d put back on some of the weight he’d lost on the liquid-only diet when he’d had that infection in the hospital, so he looked a lot less gaunt and pale. He’d clearly been working out again, too, because the weight he’d put on was all muscle and nothing else.

Lance, who’d been out of the hospital for a couple of weeks longer than he had and still wasn’t cleared for field duty, felt lazy compared to him. Still – Oliver was nearly twenty years his junior. It was natural that he bounced back from injuries a lot faster.

“So,” Lance said. “Looks like someone got the better of you. Badly enough that my colleague, Sergeant Garcia, is prepared to go to the DA on your behalf to press charges.”

Lance watched with interest as Oliver’s face went from being open and almost friendly to an emotionless mask over a matter of seconds.

“No,” Oliver said, firmly. “I won’t have anything to do with that.”

“Who beat you up, Oliver? Was it the man living with you? Garcia tells me your neighbours know him as ‘William Winters.’”

Oliver stared at him flatly, his jaw set, refusing to say anything.

Lance sighed. “Come on, Queen. You’ve got to give me something. Did you or did you not argue with Winters?”

“We argued,” Oliver admitted. “But he _didn’t_ lay a finger on me.”

“Who did then?”

Oliver was looking at the wall behind Lance’s shoulder. “No one. I have a bad knee, it gave out on me, and I fell down the stairs.”

“Uh-huh,” Lance said, because he wasn’t believing a word of that. “What’s your relationship with Winters?”

“Why does it matter?” Oliver said, a little too quickly. He was hiding something then, which made Lance suspicious that perhaps Winters was his secret douchebag boyfriend after all. He wouldn’t have picked Oliver as gay, or bisexual, or whatever, but he wouldn’t have picked it in his Sara, either, and it really wasn’t any of his business regardless. He let that line of questioning drop.

“Okay. I’m going to go see what I can find out about William Winters and then I’ll come back and talk to you again.”

To Lance’s consternation, there was no such person as William Winters. After Oliver had given his statement he left the police station and when an officer went around to his apartment the following morning to check in on him and see if he was all right, it was discovered from the neighbours that he had up and moved out in the early hours before dawn – along with the man who identified himself as William. They left no forwarding address.

They just… vanished.

A description was taken of ‘William Winters’ in case he ever turned up again. The neighbours all reported the same things. He was tall, had tanned skin and dark hair streaked grey. If they had to guess they would say he was in his early forties. He didn’t speak much, but when he did speak he was gruff, abrupt. The general consensus was that he had an accent. Australian or New Zealand, probably. Possibly South African. No one living in the apartment complex was educated enough to be completely certain.

He usually wore sunglasses, even at night. A couple of the residents thought he was blind because of this, but others insisted that he neither had difficulty navigating nor seemed to walk into things. The woman who lived downstairs from Oliver imagined that he might have some sort of deformity or something that meant he was constantly hiding his _eyes_.

William Winters sounded an awful lot like another man who Detective Lance was fairly certain the Arrow had killed a little over two months ago – the same man who had abducted Thea Queen and threatened both Thea and Moira at gunpoint after crashing into their car on a separate occasion. Slade Wilson.

But that didn’t make the faintest scrap of sense, no matter which way Lance looked at it.

First, because Wilson was dead.

Second, because Oliver was the person who’d killed him.

Third, because it just wasn’t _possible_. The Arrow wouldn’t leave a threat like that running around in Starling City.

And anyway, Wilson’s army was gone. There had been no further suspicious deaths that could be attributed to him. Surely, if he was still alive, he wouldn’t be playing house with his mortal enemy?

No. Definitely not.

Still, there was something _not right_ with Oliver Queen and Quentin Lance was worried. With a sense of foreboding, he dialled Felicity Smoak.

“Hey. You heard from your former boss lately?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trying to get that plot rolling now.
> 
> you have no idea how hard it was to write this. not even because there's anything wrong with writing right now but i have the sick and everything hurts and i'm so tired and i just wanna take a nap.
> 
> also i might get out 1 more chapter, and then i'm out. i'll be in the tropics for 8 days with (probably) no wifi and i got shit to do while i'm there anyway so i shouldn't even be writing so yeah. UPCOMING HIATUS!


	15. Fourteen: Safety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver and Slade settle into their new digs.

**Chapter Fourteen:** Safety

“Just how many safe houses do you maintain?” Slade asked, looking around their new digs with interest.

“A few,” Oliver replied. “I wouldn’t really call this one safe, though, since I own this building outright and my name is on the lease all the tenants sign. If someone really wanted to find us here, it wouldn’t be hard.”

Slade came back into the living area from the bedroom. “Will they look?”

Oliver shrugged. “Maybe. I mean, like I said, I’ve got a few of these places… It’d take them a while so we’d hopefully hear about it and get a head start if they did.”

“Never would’ve taken you for a property mogul,” Slade muttered. “And if you’re raking in all this rent, why are you still so broke?”

“I charge just enough to employ a fulltime property manager to look after these places and maintain the buildings themselves. Nothing more,” Oliver replied.

Slade dropped down onto the couch with an exhausted sigh. Neither of them had slept in nearly thirty hours and it was beginning to show. “Christ. You set this up since you came back from the island?”

Oliver shrugged. “Well, yeah.”

“I never found any record of it.”

“I tried not to be too obvious about it,” Oliver said.

He cast his own considering glance around the boxlike apartment they now found themselves in. It was on the top floor of six, facing a grimy alleyway with an overflowing dumpster in it. The wallpaper was peeling. There were dried up death moths in the light fixture hanging from the ceiling, and flies on the windowsills. The paint on the baseboards was flaking. The pipes in the walls creaked and groaned. Structurally, however, the building was sound. The sprinkler system worked, so did the central heating, the wiring had all been redone within the past year, and there had been earthquake strengthening completed six months ago.

Not that there was liable to be any further earthquakes. But it was better to be safe than sorry.

They were in another apartment building in the Glades, a dozen blocks from the last one, which they had hastily dismantled. It had taken just two hours to remove all traces of their existence from their previous location. Scant possessions were packed up into duffle bags within ten minutes. It’d taken longer to put the mirror back up in the bathroom and discretely remove the bars from the window and the iron door from the bedroom. More difficult to get them outside and dump them three blocks away without any of the neighbours noticing, too.

If anyone cared to examine the apartment closely, then it would be abundantly clear that there had been some sort of door there, and equally that there had been someone screwed on over the window into a metal frame.

They left behind the cot, the fridge full of leftovers, the calendar with the happy sheepdog and his goats. Emptied the safe and left that too.

“You’re too good for your own good. You know that, don’t you?” Slade asked.

Oliver sat down beside him, tiredly rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. “No. I don’t,” he said.

Slade wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into a hug.

“I don’t see a lot of other people doing what you do, all for the benefit of others rather than yourself.”

Oliver made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, and Slade laughed, shook his head, then pressed a kiss against the side of Oliver’s temple.

“Can’t decide whether I find that quality about you irritating or endearing,” Slade said.

“You realise we were almost caught last night?” Oliver asked, pulling away from him so he could look him in the eye.

“I was aware of that, kid, yes. I _am_ the one who will spend the rest of my natural life in prison,” Slade replied.

“Ah. Yeah, I know,” Oliver said. “I—”

“If you apologise one more fucking time, I’m going to hit you, kid,” Slade growled.

Oliver shut his mouth so quickly his teeth clicked, and Slade chuckled lowly. Then, suddenly, he yawned.

“I take it you aren’t going to work at the docks this morning?” Oliver asked.

“Nah,” Slade replied. “They can cope without me for a day, I suspect.”

Neither of them could be bothered making up the bed, so they slept curled together in the bedroom on the bare, sagging mattress with nothing a couple of scratchy blankets. It reminded Oliver of the island in more ways than one. The following morning he woke to find that Slade was already up and had cooked breakfast.

Slade wasn’t really much of a cook. Oliver learned that a _really_ long time ago. Sure, he could fry meat until it wouldn’t poison them – had often done it on the island – but the one thing he was pretty decent at were eggs. So when Oliver stirred because Slade was nudging him impatiently, and he caught the first whiff of eggs and bacon, he grinned.

“Really?” he asked.

“Don’t get too used to it,” Slade said. “I don’t do the whole domestic thing too often.”

“Coulda fooled me, the way you’ve been acting the last few weeks,” Oliver said.

“I could stop, if it bothers you.”

Oliver looked at him, feeling a hollow ache in his chest. Did he mean he was going to leave? “Don’t.”

“Fine,” Slade said. “Come on, up, kid. Your phone’s been ringing non-stop since about two o’clock.”

“Oh, God, why didn’t you wake me up?” Oliver yelped, leaping off the mattress on the floor and digging around in his duffel bag for a pair of jeans and a shirt to throw on.

“Figured you needed to sleep more than you needed your ear chewed off by Felicity,” Slade replied. “You should eat before you go out, too.”

Oliver didn’t miss the way Slade moved to put himself between the Oliver and the door. Oliver considered the fire escape for a moment – then decided it would be too much hassle to argue with Slade about it later, pulled on his shirt, and sat down at the little scratched up kitchen table where his breakfast of bacon and eggs was cooling.

Slade smiled faintly as he shovelled his breakfast into his mouth with one hand and checked his messages with his other.

“I’ve got to go,” Oliver said. “There’s Vertigo cropping up on the streets again and Felicity thinks she has a lead but it’s time sensitive—”

“Go on, then,” Slade said. “Get going. I’ll see you later – but Oliver.”

“Yeah?”

Slade gave him a steady look with his one dark eye sparkling in the light of their little apartment. “Stay safe. For me. Please?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> been such a long time, I actually forgotten where I was going with this. but then I remembered so it's all good. i'm super busy though. so don't really expect regular updates from here out, okay? I've got heaps of other stuff I extremely need to write as a priority.


	16. Fifteen: Suspicions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People are beginning to wonder what is going on with Oliver.

**Chapter Fifteen:** Suspicion

Felicity, Roy, and Diggle were already at the second lair when Oliver arrived.

“Where on earth have you been, Oliver?” Felicity asked, immediately. “It was like you dropped off the face of the planet. You really need to stop doing that.”

“Yeah, it’s starting to get a little old,” Roy said. “You might like to, I dunno, answer your phone every once in a while.”

“Sorry,” Oliver said. “I was busy.”

He watched Felicity share a glance with Roy and Diggle.

“Uh-huh,” Dig said, leaning back against one of the desks and wearing his best ‘I know you’re lying to me right now, and you know you’re lying, and this whole thing would go a lot easier if you just told us all the truth’ face.

“So,” Felicity said. “Detective Lance called me.”

Oliver paused to process that for a moment. “Okay,” he said, deciding it wasn’t the end of the world. “Is this about the Vertigo you mentioned in your text. Did he want the Arrow, or…?”

“This had nothing to do with the Arrow. He was worried about you, _Oliver Queen_ ,” Felicity replied.

Oliver frowned. “But why?”

“Are you serious?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“Were you, or were you not, at the station last night because you were the victim of an assault?” Felicity said, sounding an awful lot like she was at the end of her patience.

“Do I _look_ like I was assaulted?” he replied, before realising that actually, he was still pretty sore, yeah. But she knew how he’d come about those injuries, anyway. She’d been the one to patch him up.

She sighed in exasperation. “No, it doesn’t,” she decided. “And anyway, you’re practically a ninja. I don’t think _anyone_ could assault you.”

“Exactly.”

“Then why did Detective Lance think someone got the jump on you, man?” Dig asked.

Oliver shrugged. “I had an argument with my roommate. It got loud and someone called the cops. Nothing actually happened.”

He watched as Felicity, Diggle and Roy all exchanged another series of bemused glances.

“You have a roommate?” Roy said.

“Well, yeah,” Oliver replied. “I can’t exactly afford to live in a mansion anymore. Having a roommate to split the bills with makes sense.”

Roy shook his head. “Wow. I had no idea.”

“None of us did,” Felicity muttered. “Our boss, the man of mystery.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Oliver said. “Let’s not have an intervention right now. I don’t even need one. So can we get back to work, please? What was this about Vertigo being back in the city?”

“You’d know about it already, if you hadn’t been so ‘busy,’” Felicity said, but she was smiling. She gave him a quick rundown of what was going on.

It turned out they had _no idea_ the extent of what had been happening under their very noses. They were woefully underprepared for the army the new – copycat? – Count Vertigo had in his employ. He appeared shortly after Oliver put an arrow in the previous Count, and had slipped under the radar for months in the ruckus that Slade and Sebastian Blood had created.

There even had been a few drug overdoses. Legitimate ones, not even Mirakuru ones, that they had overlooked after Oliver realised that Mirakuru was back on the streets.

They worked it out pretty quickly, though. During their first skirmish with the new Count Vertigo’s army, Diggle got winged, and Oliver nearly took a bullet to the head. It was a near miss, which he actually only realised as he felt the patter of concrete dust on the back of his hood, and then he was moving again, knocking an arrow and releasing the string and listening to it whistle and thunk as it hit its target, because he couldn’t stay still and let them flank him.

He’d learned that lesson a long time ago.

In the end, he, Diggle and Roy had to beat a strategic retreat and leave the new Count Vertigo for another night because Oliver and Roy were both out of arrows and Oliver was half-afraid that Dig was going to go into shock on them.

Felicity fretted, and blamed herself for not realising this had been going on sooner, and then she and Oliver patched Dig up the best they could between them while Roy watched on, looking sick.

When Oliver got back to his apartment, he was shattered from the post-adrenaline low.

Slade took one look at him and demanded to know what had happened.

“Just a rough night is all,” Oliver replied. “Don’t worry about it.”

And he headed through to the bedroom to crash on the bed, which he noted idly had been made in his absence, the sheets and blankets tucked immaculately. He woke only briefly to Slade carding his fingers through his hair, and when he was woken by his phone jangling way too early the following morning, he thought it was a dream.

Detective Lance wanted to see him – he suggested they meet up at a coffee house near the precinct.

Grumbling and cursing to himself, Oliver got up and went to meet the detective.

Lance was already there when he arrived, looking a lot more chipper than Oliver felt. He’d probably been awake for _hours_ already. Secretly, Oliver cursed people who could maintain normal circadian rhythms. He was pretty sure he was beginning to get too old for this shit, never mind that he wasn’t even thirty yet. He used to be way better at this whole staying up until the wee hours of the morning business when he was younger, he swore.

Or, well, maybe he just needed more than about ninety minutes of sleep a night. Wasn’t staying in bed until four in the afternoon a regular occurrence back in the good old days? He couldn’t recall anymore.

Sometimes, his old life seemed an awful lot like a half-remembered dream, or maybe a story someone once told him about someone else.

Either way.

“Detective Lance,” he said, smiling cordially and approaching the man. “What did you want to see me about?”

Lance looked him up and down. His lip curled. “You look like shit, Queen. Get in another fight with your boyfriend last night?”

“Nah. Bar fight,” Oliver replied. “You know me. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Actually, I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Lance said.

Oliver nearly did a double-take. Nearly. “I’m sorry?”

Lance shrugged. “I was worried about you. You were pretty beat up the other day – still are, as a matter of fact.” He scowled. “And the description I got given by your neighbours of the person you were arguing with, this William Winters… well. He just sounds an awful lot like someone we both know and really don’t like.”

With an effort, Oliver kept his face blank, though he felt his heart lurch. Crap. Lance was suspicious. “Oh. Really? Who?”

“That Wilson fellow,” Lance replied. “Guy who kidnapped your sister and threatened to kill both her and your mother. Didn’t think you would’ve forgotten him so quickly.”

“I hadn’t,” Oliver said. “But there’s no correlation. Trust me.”

Lance gave him a frankly disbelieving look. “If you’re sure.”

Oliver smiled tightly, made his excuses, ordered himself a coffee to go, and hastily left. He was glad he and Slade had left when they had, but he realised now more than ever that he needed to keep his ear to the ground to make sure no one was coming after them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dunno when i'll get the chapter after this one up. i'm pretty busy.
> 
> could be tomorrow night. could be a month from now, I can't judge my writing schedule ahead of time.
> 
> ah.
> 
> people are probably gonna find out soon. I mean, felicity and lance aren't stupid or anything and Ollie's beginning to act sorta dodgy. so this is hardly even a spoiler.


	17. Sixteen: Absence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver is missing.

**Chapter Sixteen:** Absence

Slade would never admit to it, but he stayed awake every night and waited for Oliver to come home. Half the time Oliver got in, he pretended to be asleep already because things were just infinitely less awkward between them that way, but he always listened for Oliver’s soft treat on the landing, and the key in the door.

The night Oliver didn’t come home, the night he went up against the copycat Count Vertigo for the third time, Slade didn’t sleep a wink. For the first few hours, when he thought everything was routine, he relaxed with a beer and watched crap TV. About the time Oliver usually got in, sometime near two in the morning, he got up, brushed his teeth, and changed. Then he waited. While he waited, he attempted to read some magazine Oliver had brought home – _US_ magazine, why did Oliver even read _US_ magazine? – but, as was usual at this time of night, he had a hard time focusing.

When four in the morning rolled around, he was beginning to feel that nagging worry in the pit of his belly. He tried to ignore it, told himself the kid had just got caught up with something at that lair of his, and he would be home later.

He didn’t want to bother the kid while he was working, so he resisted the urge to send off a quick text message, and kept waiting.

Dawn came, and with it no Oliver.

Worry became a sick sort of dread that made it hard to stay still.

Disregarding his earlier decision, he sent Oliver a text.

_Where are you?_

There was no reply. The kid wasn’t normally all that great at answering his messages, so Slade waited some more, and when another hour had gone past he sent the message again. Again, nothing.

Dread became a constricting fear.

Something was wrong. He turned on the television, switched it to the news channel, and found nothing remarkable except a string of unusual cat poisonings. Surely, if something had happened to Oliver Queen it would have been all over the news right now. Just as surely, if the Arrow had been caught by the police, that, too, would be televised.

That meant something else had happened.

 _Shit_. Had Oliver been killed?

Slade shook his head to dispel the idea. No, he was better than that. Kid had beaten _him_ , after all. He wasn’t indestructible by any means, but he could take care of himself these days.

Then what? What had happened? Why wasn’t he answering his phone, and why hadn’t he come home?

Was he injured?

Slade considered calling the hospital, talked himself out of it, then reconsidered. But, no, no one matching Oliver Queen’s description had been admitted last night.

Slade hung up, and paced some more.

Felicity Smoak almost never went into the field with Oliver and the rest of his team. She stayed back and coordinated everyone from afar. If something had happened, she would know, and the likelihood of her being injured or killed also was comparatively low, since she was never on scene.

Felicity Smoak was also the wily young woman who he had kidnapped and threatened to kill, who had been the one to jab him with the Mirakuru antiserum, and who currently thought he was dead – just like the rest of Starling City. Only, she was more likely than most other people in Starling City to recognise him, apart from a select few, because she was one of the few people to have met him in person. He could hardly waltz up to her and demand to know what was going on. That would be suicide. She would probably inform A.R.G.U.S straight away, and Slade didn’t even want to go there.

Or… _was_ it suicide?

There was always the option of disguise. Oliver pulled it off so well, after all.

He could hardly wear his Deathstroke uniform. That would be too painfully obvious. Funny the way the mask he had once worn to preserve his anonymity so long ago was now so publicly associated with his name. He would need to do something else…

Well, a balaclava and sunglasses it was. He couldn’t put together anything better on such short notice.

Slade did not question why Oliver kept a balaclava handy in his sock drawer. He just accepted it as fact and stuffed it in his pocket before shoving on the sunglasses.

In the tiny living room of their apartment, he considered his choice of weapons. Sword – no, too recognisable. Handgun, then. Oliver hadn’t kept more than a single magazine of bullets, though, and Slade didn’t really fancy walking into a gun store right now and trying to buy more. He had a feeling he was working on limited time as it was.

And a couple of combat knives as backup.

Slade could still remember the days before Oliver learnt to use a bow, when a knife was the only weapon the kid carried. It felt like forever ago.

Down in the street, he hotwired a rusty old Ford and drove it to within four blocks of Oliver’s second lair. Then he pulled up by the curb and thought for a long minute about what he was about to do. If there was nothing wrong, then the kid would be absolutely furious with him. On the other hand, it was now nearing nine o’clock in the morning, and Oliver was never, ever this late home, not without word. Even when he was still keeping Slade a captive, he had still returned, almost like clockwork. Even if they didn’t speak to each other, Slade could still hear him moving about in the other room.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was fundamentally _wrong_.

With that in mind, he got out of the car and made his way to the building that housed Oliver’s second lair. He knew the codes to get in. Oliver told him what they were, in case there was ever an emergency, weeks ago.

Felicity was still there when he arrived, balaclava pulled down over his face. He had considered the idea that she might not be, that she might have gone home, but he figured that if something was wrong then she was likely to have stayed. His gamble paid off.

She had seen him come in on the security feeds, and was waiting for him with a gun in her hands. She looked frightened, but her aim was steady, her chin raised defiantly, her gaze firm.

Not for the first time, Slade wondered how he had ever considered this young woman weak. She had more guts than Oliver did back on the island.

“How did you get in here?” she asked. And then, before he could even open his mouth to answer, she added: “I set the security system up myself. You couldn’t have hacked it. Not that fast. So who gave you the key code? Who’d you torture it out of? Which of my friends did you hurt? What do you want, anyway?”

Her voice was breaking.

“I want to know where the Arrow is,” Slade replied, confused.

“You know where the Arrow is!” she snapped. “You and your buddies have him! So you’re here for me, then? Well, I’ve got news for you, pal. I’m not going with you without a fight.”

And she pulled the trigger.

Slade dived behind one of the desks, narrowly avoiding a bullet in the head.

“Hold your fire, girlie!” he roared. “I don’t know who you think I am, or what my plans for you are, or whatever, but I don’t want to hurt you or Oliver! I just want to know where he is!”

“Stop lying!” Felicity yelled. She fired again, and hit the desk. Splinters of wood exploded everywhere.

“I would if I was lying in the first place. But I make a habit of telling the truth these days,” Slade replied. “Now tell me, where the hell is Oliver Queen? Trust me, I want to leave as much as you want me to!”

“Are you, or are you not, with Count Vertigo?” she asked, sobbing.

“No! Why would I team up with that madman?” he growled.

He heard her gulp, but didn’t come out from behind the desk because he favoured having his head on his shoulders.

“Then who are you and why are you here?”

“I’m a friend of Oliver’s, and I just want to know where he is.”

“If you’re a friend, why are you wearing a balaclava?” she asked.

Damn, she had him.

“Because I’m photosensitive and can’t go out in daylight,” he said, making up the first lie that crossed him mind.

Felicity scoffed, then hiccupped. “I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t, then,” Slade replied. “Just tell me where to find Oliver Queen and I’ll leave. If Count Vertigo’s got him, what harm can telling me do anyway?”

Apparently, she couldn’t find a way to refute that argument, because she shakily told him. Slade beat a hasty retreat. He made it to the rusty old Ford and into the driver’s seat, where he dropped his head into his hands and fought the urge to vomit. Oh, God, what was he doing? He thought he had given up this life. He’d never said it in words, never had to. But he’d changed his habits, changed everything he did, worked so hard to slip into the role of a regular human being again so Oliver wouldn’t have to worry.

But it was so easy to slip back into the role, so _painfully_ easy.

Oliver needed him.

He started up the car and peeled away from the curb, heading towards where Felicity was fairly certain the new Count Vertigo had set up his hideout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm going somewhere with this


	18. Seventeen: Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The others find out.

**Chapter Seventeen:** Rescue

Count Vertigo’s men kept them regularly dosed with the drug they were pedalling. That, and the fact that all three of them were injured, made escaping the cell they had been put in extremely difficult.

Oliver didn’t know why the Count wanted them kept alive, though he suspected it was so they could be used for testing at a later date, like lab rats. Roy wasn’t holding up too good. Oliver was fairly certain he was going into shock. Dig had popped a stitch or two, and while he wasn’t bleeding heavily, he _was_ bleeding, but Oliver was having trouble focusing long enough to figure out what to do about it.

Oliver himself had sustained a pretty good concussion, hit from behind. That was the only reason they’d been able to get him down long enough to dose him in the first place. Probably wasn’t helping his focus issues none, though.

Their weapons had been taken from them. So had most of their clothes, in case they had secreted blades hidden in the lining of a shirt or something. The cell, which was in a damp basement of an old warehouse in the Glades, was not warm by any stretch of the word.

Oliver had the strangest feeling he was going to die down here, bested by men he should have been able to take any day of the week, except for a couple of lucky shots.

“Felicity will figure something out,” Dig said. “She’ll send in Detective Lance and the SCPD to clear out this rat’s nest. We’ll be okay.”

Oliver rubbed at his eyes with his hands. “How are we gonna explain what _we’re_ doing down here?”

“Think. We aren’t the first people he’s taken. There were others, too, from as far back as Sebastian Blood’s campaign for mayor. That’ll work in our favour.”

“As long as they don’t find any of our gear,” Oliver replied.

Roy didn’t say anything. His teeth were chattering.

Oliver found it easier to concentrate in complete darkness. The light was his enemy. It confused him, sent shards of pain through his eyes and into his brain and made the world around him spin disconcertingly. He had heard, from various sources, that taking Vertigo was supposed to be a pleasant experience, but he decided he must have been having a bad trip because what he was going through was miles from pleasant.

His head hurt, his chest ached, and he was having a hard time getting enough air. He kept thinking he was seeing things out of the corners of his eyes, but when he turned his head to look, there was nothing there.

“This fucking sucks,” Roy groaned at one point.

That was the only thing Oliver heard him say for hours.

When the gunshots started, Oliver imagined he was hallucinating, because by that point he had already been imagining fairies, and cats, a hellhound that just about made him pee himself in terror, a shadowy figure with octopus tendrils instead of a moustache, his mother looking at him in disappointment, his father shouting at him and he didn’t know why, Yao Fei dying again, and Shado gently wiping the sweat from his forehead and telling him he was sick.

He pulled himself back to full consciousness with a monumental effort, to discover that the gunshots were still there. Outside the cell, men were screaming as they died.

Oliver glanced at Diggle.

“The SCPD?” Dig wondered.

“I dunno,” Oliver said. “Wouldn’t we have heard them identify themselves? And…” He paused to listen. “Wouldn’t there be more of them?”

As far as he could tell, there was just a single shooter out there.

The firefight raged interminably. Oliver could not accurately just the passage of time. It might have been thirty seconds. It might have been hours. But then there was silence, audible silence. And footsteps approaching their cell. Oliver and Diggle drew back into the corner where Roy was slumped and shivering, preparing to defend themselves – and the kid if need be – when the door crashed open.

In the doorway there stood a figure dressed in black. Oliver blinked, and blinked again, trying to bring them into focus. They were broad-shouldered, their face obscured somehow, and something about their eyes glinted in the dim half-light – and even the dim half-light was enough to confuse him.

The figure was holding something in one of his hands. It took Oliver a long moment to realise that it was a bundle of clothes. And then the figure tossed it into the centre of the cell.

“Get dressed,” the figure barked. “We’re leaving.”

There was something familiar about that voice… But no. Couldn’t be. Another glance at Diggle, and Oliver found him frowning, even as he reached for his shirt. He seemed perplexed.

Roy was just out of it.

Getting dressed was inordinately difficult. Oliver couldn’t summon the fine motor skills to deal with his own zipper. The man in the dark clothes had to step in and help him. And then he had his bow and quiver thrust at him.

“Shoot me in the back, kid, and I’ll shoot you in the fucking leg, y’hear?” the dark-clad figure growled, and Oliver knew who he was, then, but he was having trouble working out how Slade had known where to find them.

He led them through hallways of carnage, up, out, into the street. It was daylight, and Oliver stumbled. A moment later, Slade was at his side, steadying him with a soft: “Easy there, kid.”

Oliver had no idea where the rusty Ford pickup came from, but he was glad he didn’t have to try and make his own way to the second lair in the middle of broad daylight dressed as the Arrow. Diggle didn’t question it either, and they helped Roy into the back before piling in themselves.

The dark-clad man dropped them off just outside the alleyway behind their building, before driving off without another word. Diggle and Oliver watched him go, swaying slightly, with Roy suspended between them, before they all hurried inside.

Felicity was waiting.

“You’re back!” she said. “You got out. I can’t believe it. You made it.”

Her attention went to Oliver first, but when she saw he was mostly on his feet, she switched to Roy, helping him over to the table where she made him sit down. She frowned.

“What happened to you three? How did you get away? Count Vertigo came online on your comms, telling me he had you. What—” Then she pulled herself. “And I think we have another problem.”

“What sort of problem?” Diggle asked.

Her gaze flicked to Oliver. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. But however you killed Slade, I’m not sure it took, because I’m about ninety-nine percent certain that I got a visit from him earlier this morning. I mean, it might not have been him, but it was a man, and he had the exact same accent – I ran speech pattern recognition and got an almost perfect match. And the security feeds tell me his height and weight were spot on, too. Oliver, what did you do with Slade’s body? Because there’s a chance the Mirakuru antiserum—”

Felicity always had been sharp, Oliver gave her that. He had had a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to keep this a secret from his team forever, either. He hadn’t figured it would come out this way, though.

“The Mirakuru antiserum worked perfectly,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose to try and stave off the headache that was threatening to overwhelm him. “If Slade was here, or there, or wherever – fuck, I’m so high right now, this isn’t even funny – then it’s because I didn’t kill him in the first place.”

No one said a word for several moments.

Then Felicity said: “ _What_?” in her Loud Voice.

And Diggle said: “What are you saying, man?”

And Roy just said: “Are you kidding me right now?”

And then Oliver had to sit down, because he was beginning to feel dizzy again and too many people were talking at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still going somewhere with this


	19. Eighteen: Uncovered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity, Diggle, Roy and Oliver have a chat.

**Chapter Eighteen:** Uncovered

“Just take some of your magic herbs so you can talk to us straight, Oliver,” Felicity said.

“They’re not ‘magic,’” Oliver objected, even as he rifled around through the first aid kit for the pouch of Yao Fei’s herbs to make a tea. “They just have… certain pro-properties that are – that can be advantageous sometimes. Like when you’re poisoned.”

“Or high as a kite on Vertigo,” she replied, drily.

“Make enough for three, man,” Dig told him, from where he was leaning warily against one of the desks.

Oliver made tea with the herbs and poured it into three separate cups. Felicity watched them all take their medicine, even as they cringed and grimaced at the taste, and then they waited for the herbs to kick in.

Felicity didn’t have the patience to wait for long. “Oliver,” she said. “Can you please explain how, and why, Slade Wilson – the _Slade Wilson_ who was trying to kill us all six months ago – knew where the second lair was. And why you possibly thought it was a good idea not to kill him?”

“Uh…”

“He’s still high, I think,” Roy slurred. “I know I am.”

Felicity sighed in exasperation. “I don’t understand. He came in here demanding to know where you were, and an hour later, you appear! He saved you, didn’t he?”

Oliver blinked at her owlishly. “Yes? See, it was a good idea not to kill him. Or he wouldn’t ‘a saved us today.”

“Why would he save you, Oliver?”

“Yeah, man,” Dig said. “That’s something I don’t get. Slade wanted you dead. He wanted everyone you ever cared about dead. Why would he come and save all our skins from the copycat Count Vertigo? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Ugh. I’m not here to be interrogated. I’m going home,” Oliver said, pushing himself out of his chair and making his way unsteadily across the room.

“You can’t!” Felicity objected. “Not if Slade’s out there. We’re all in danger. You, _your mother_ , me. What if he has something to do with Thea? He might—!”

“Do absolutely nothing,” Oliver replied, scrubbing at his face with his hands tiredly. “He’ll probably just go to work or something, like he usually does. And he has nothing to do with… wherever Thea is right now. It’s okay, Felicity, I’ve been keeping an eye on him for the past few months, and he’s not doing anything. It’s fine. Trust me.”

“Kinda hard to trust you when you’ve been lying to us for months, Oliver,” she pointed out.

He considered her for a long moment. “You gonna tell anyone?”

She shook her head. He looked at Roy and Diggle. Dig shrugged and said, “Whatever, man.” Roy averted his gaze and looked at his feet, which was good enough for Oliver.

Suddenly, Felicity hissed. “Oliver, your roommate that Detective Lance was worried about—”

Oliver grinned weakly and scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah?”

“That was Slade, wasn’t it?” she said, almost under her breath.

“I told you I was keeping an eye on him, didn’t I?”

“Living with the guy?” Diggle said. “That’s a whole other level of suicidal. Why hasn’t he killed you in your sleep?”

“We came to an accord ages ago. Look, I’m wrecked, so I really am gonna go home now.”

He went to change back into his street clothes. As he did, he heard Roy mutter: “Oh, God, he’s gone insane, hasn’t he?”

And Felicity replied: “I don’t know, Roy, I really don’t know.”

He wondered how to fix this problem, before it caused a rift in the team that he wasn’t going to be able to fix.

Rather than ride his motorcycle home, he took a cab, because he still wasn’t too steady on his feet and no matter what anyone said, he wasn’t actually an idiot. Slade was sitting in the one armchair that faced the front door of their apartment, waiting for him. He’d changed, as was dressed in the clothes he usually wore to work, but he hadn’t gone, yet.

He looked tired, like he’d been awake too long, and there was a tightness about his eyes that showed his concern.

As soon as Oliver stepped through the front door, he was on his feet and at Oliver’s side, checking him over for obvious injuries since he hadn’t been able to do it before. Within moments, he’d found the contusion on the side of Oliver’s head and was making a face in sympathy.

“Think you’ll live, mate, but that’s nasty.”

Oliver sighed. “They know, Slade.”

Slade froze. “Damn it. Who figured it out?”

“Felicity,” Oliver said. “It was your voice.”

“Yeah. Accent’s a bit of a dead giveaway, isn’t it? She always was a sharp one. What do we do, then?”

“Nothing,” Oliver replied. “It’s just Felicity, Dig and Roy who know, and they won’t tell anybody. Probably.”

“They aren’t gonna be happy, though, are they?” Slade asked, reaching out to steady Oliver automatically when he lurched slightly.

“They aren’t happy at all,” Oliver said. He flopped onto the couch in exhaustion, and Slade sat down next to him, wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and pulled him close. “But you saved our asses back there. How’s you know to come?”

“You’re kidding me, right?” Slade breathed into Oliver’s hair. “You’re always back between two and four in the morning. Always. I knew something was up straight away.”

“And your first thought was to come and save me?”

“Old habits die hard, I guess.” He gave a one-armed shrug.

Oliver laid his head against Slade’s shoulder and sighed. “Thanks.”

“I’d do it again in a heartbeat, Oliver,” Slade said. He was staring out the window, at the wall of the building just across the alley, and he sounded completely sincere. With his head where it was, pressed against Slade’s chest, he could hear the slow, steady _thud, thud_ of his heart, feel it when Slade took a deep breath and swallowed. “You realise you’re all I’ve got left, right?”

 _What_? Oliver didn’t realise he’d said it aloud until Slade answered him.

“Everyone’s dead, kid. And even if they aren’t dead, I can still never go back.”

“I don’t understand,” Oliver said.

Slade took another deep breath. “God, you’re blind sometimes. Look, Oliver. Billy – Billy was my partner. But he betrayed me, and I killed him. Yao Fei is dead. My son, Joe – I abandoned him years ago. He’s living with his grandparents now, and it’s better that way. It’s just better, because this way I can’t hurt him. My wife… ex-wife… God, I never should have married that bitch. Well, I wouldn’t touch her with a ten foot pole. And Shado – Shado’s dead, too. I can’t go back to the ASIS, not after everything I’ve done. I’m a criminal, after all. Don’t you get it? You’re the only one left. If it wasn’t for you…”

He trailed off. The air in the apartment felt heavy.

“I’m sorry,” Oliver said.

“Haven’t we talked about this?” Slade asked. “You saved me, kid. No need to be sorry.”

“No.” Oliver reached out to take his large, warm hand, and interlaced their fingers. He wasn’t entirely sure when they got so familiar with each other like this again, but it felt right, and Slade didn’t object. If anything, he smiled a little, and began to trace circles on the back of Oliver’s knuckles with his thumb. “I’m sorry so much bad stuff happened. But – I dunno – maybe you’re wrong about Joe. Maybe you could fly down and see him one time or something. It can’t be that bad, right?”

Slade scoffed. His one eye was glittering, and red, and it hurt Oliver to see it. “I can’t, Oliver. I don’t want to mess that little kid up. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“So don’t mess him up. Just be, like, a normal dad.” Oliver shrugged. “My Dad wasn’t perfect either, you know. Look at it this way: No matter what you do, you’ll have to work really hard to be as bad as Tommy’s dad was.”

Slade laughed. “You’ve got a point.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> actually, I lied. I don't know where i'm going. i'm totally making this up on the fly.


	20. Nineteen: How it used to be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slade reminisces.

**Chapter Nineteen:** How it used to be

There had been a handful of truly magical days on the island. Days where they were not being chased, where it was not raining, or snowing, or even very cold, days where they had managed to find enough to eat, and days where neither of them were injured or fighting off low-grade fevers or dysentery. The days after they missed the plane, but before they became aware of the danger posed by Scylla, when it was just the two of them and for a few fleeting moments, everything had been okay.

And somehow, everything that occurred on those days had seemed so… easy. So natural. When hand-to-hand combat lessons degenerated into play-fighting that neither of them were taking seriously, and then somehow that became heated touches and kisses and finally sex.

Slade hadn’t really considered the consequences, and he didn’t think Oliver had either. It’s just been the two of them, they were there, and that was that.

In retrospect, life had been so simple back then. Kill or be killed. Survive. And when they were safe, they fucked like rabbits, because what else was there to do on that Godforsaken island? That had been just about the only pleasure left to either of them.

Then Shado came, and with her the jealousy, though Slade was never sure whether he was jealous of Oliver, or Shado, or both of them, for the connection they seemed to share, when he had been working so hard to avoid attachments. As a third party watching innocent lovemaking hurt him, viscerally, because it felt like something he could never have, would never have again.

She had taken it from him. Or had Oliver?

After a while, he couldn’t tell anymore. All he knew was that he was lonely.

And then Shado was dead, and he missed her, and the Mirakuru twisted everything.

Now he was better, but he’d hurt Oliver and he no longer knew how to approach the kid. Nothing was as free or easy as it had once been. His Oliver, the Oliver from the island who he’d fallen in love with all those years ago, was gone. In his place was a broken shell who’d seen too much in his short life. But Slade still loved him just the same, even though he was no longer that playful kid who would do anything he could to avoid violence, but instead an damaged killer.

There were times, however, when he longed for the easiness that had once existed between them. For the banter. Oh, they still bantered now, but there was always a darker undertone these days. He was constantly afraid of what Oliver might do, how he might get himself injured next, of that lurking despair that drove the kid to recklessness that Slade could see in his face and read in his body language.

He sat on the couch with Oliver’s head in his lap. Oliver was brooding quietly, wrapped in one of the scratchy woollen blankets from their bed. Coming down off the Vertigo had not been an enjoyable experience for either of them. His hair was damp with sweat, and shivered spasmodically every now and again. For a time, Slade had rubbed soothing circles on his back, but the motion had felt forced, so he stopped and simply sat there and let Oliver sweat it out.

“Slade?” Oliver said, after a time.

“Yeah, kid?” Slade put the book he was reading face down on the arm of the chair and turned his attention to Oliver, resting his hand on Oliver’s shoulder.

“I don’t – I don’t know what to do. I’m scared.”

Slade thought about that statement for a minute. “You don’t know what to do about what, Oliver?”

“Everything. Thea. The company. My mother. I just… And what am I going to tell the others? I mean about you. They know you’re alive and I’ve been harbouring you but how do I – how do I make it right? Felicity was really upset. I don’t… I don’t want them to leave, Slade. The team… Without the team, there is no Arrow.”

Oliver wasn’t usually this talkative. Slade realised that Oliver was half-asleep, and possibly still suffering the after-effects of the Vertigo. Damn it for making him truthful, though.

“What do I do, Slade?” Oliver asked.

“I don’t know either, kid,” Slade said honestly. “We’ll work it out when you’re feeling better though, eh? Now isn’t the time to think about that sort of thing.”

“I,” Oliver began, before saying: “Yeah, all right,” in a trusting voice. “Thanks.”

The following day, Oliver didn’t go anywhere. He just spent the entire day on the couch, getting up only to take himself through to the bathroom. Slade went to work down at the docks, and came home to find that Oliver had not gone out to do his night job, and was exactly where he’d left him.

“Not going out tonight?” Slade asked.

Oliver shook his head. “The only person who’s up to it is Felicity, and she’s looking after Roy. He’s pretty sick, apparently.”

“Want to go out for dinner, then? I haven’t been out in forever.”

He hadn’t eaten dinner out for the entire duration of his stay with Oliver. There had been that one lunch, and that was it.

Oliver was looked at him curiously. “Okay,” he agreed, after a moment of hesitation.

There was a lot to be said against wearing sunglasses at night, but the eye-patch was too recognisable. They went to a little Italian place within walking distance of their apartment. It was not very busy, so they were able to just walk in off the street without a reservation. The food was good, thought the conversation was minimal.

Slade missed the chatty Oliver of old, who had to be reminded repeatedly to shut the fuck up or one of Fyers’ patrols might hear them.

Neither was in the mood for dessert, so they skipped it, and went for a walk together through the dark streets of the Glades instead.

“They’re doing a pretty good job of rebuilding,” Slade observed.

“Yeah,” Oliver agreed. “That’s what really bothers me sometimes, you know. There were all these buildings that weren’t up to regulation here, and the earthquake knocked them down, and now there are a lot better buildings going up for the people here to live in. So, in a way, Merlyn’s earthquake machine actually did a good thing for some people. It got a lot of them out of sub-standard living conditions – even though so many others died. And – I just don’t know, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Slade said.

Oliver sighed. “I miss Tommy.”

“I wish I’d met him.”

“You would’ve hated him,” Oliver replied. “He was too much like I used to be. He would’ve driven you up the wall.”

“I dunno, kid. You had your charms, back in the day.”

Slade took a chance and took Oliver’s hand. Oliver didn’t draw away – rather, he squeezed his fingers in response, and smiled a little.

Slade felt his heart lighten, just a tiny bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man this is slow burn. these two just can't ever take a single step forward in the first place because they're both fuckin paralysed by the past.


	21. Twenty: Awkward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slade meets the team properly.

**Chapter Twenty:** Awkward

“I swear on my dear departed Mum’s grave, I am not here to hurt you. Any of you. And, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about before. I wasn’t in my right mind.”

Felicity Smoak stood with her arms folded over her chest, looking the epitome of unimpressed. The fact that Diggle had chosen right this moment to start cleaning his gun spoke volumes. And Roy just seemed confused and angry. Oliver, who was standing behind them all, looked like he was having trouble staying still and it was only a monumental force of will that was keeping him from rocking backwards and forwards on his feet, or wringing his hands.

For what it was worth, Slade felt like the freak at the freak show who was being put on display for the very first time.

“Uh-huh. _Right_ ,” Felicity said. “Okay. I’m not even going to pretend this isn’t a little weird. Oliver?”

“Yes, Felicity?” Oliver said, stepping forward to stand by her.

“You’re completely certain he’s not going to murder us all?”

“I’m right here,” Slade said. “I can hear you, you know.”

“I’m trying to pretend you aren’t,” Felicity replied. “I mean – that’s not very nice of me. But you _were_ going to kill me, you know. While you were on your psychopathic rampage of death and destruction. Which I still have nightmares about, by the way. Thanks. So. You can forgive me if I have a few issues being around you and all, and I’m just going to pretend you’re not right there for right now. _Oliver_.”

“Yes?” Oliver said, again.

“You want to tell me why you thought it was a good idea to bring Slade Wilson to the lair?”

Oliver shrugged. “He’s been here before. He knows where it is, and he knows the combination to get in. I figured – I don’t know – maybe it was time for a little ‘get to know you’ exercise.”

Roy snorted.

“If you don’t want to be part of it, you can always leave,” Oliver said.

“Nah, I’m staying for this,” Roy replied. “I wanna watch.”

An awkward silence descended on the lair. Then Diggle set aside the handgun he was cleaning, stood up, and strolled across the room to stand in front of Slade, who held his ground.

“So,” Diggle said. “Oliver’s telling the truth, then? You’re reformed? One hundred percent. Never gonna go on another murder spree again?”

“I can’t promise that,” Slade said. “I can’t predict the future, after all.”

Diggle scowled at him.

“I can’t promise that I will never intentionally harm Oliver, or any of those he holds dearest, ever again,” Slade added. “That’s the last thing I want at this stage.”

“Why?” Diggle asked. “What made you change your mind?”

Slade nodded at Oliver, who had moved away from Felicity’s side and was silently pacing around the edges of the lair, a bit like a caged tiger. “He did. Oliver can be fairly persuasive, when he wants to be. I owe him my life, and my sanity besides.”

Slade watched interestedly as Diggle and Felicity shared a nervous glance.

“Okay,” Felicity decided. “If Oliver trusts you that much, then I guess we don’t have much choice, do we? Just know that we’ll be watching you.”

“And the moment you step out of line, A.R.G.U.S is gonna know about it,” Diggle added, firmly.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Slade said.

“That was a lot less explosive than I thought it was going to be,” Roy grumbled, as everyone dispersed – Felicity back to her computers, Diggle back to the gun he’d been cleaning, and Oliver to start working out by himself. Slade was observing Oliver, who had stripped off his shirt and was sparring with one of the training dummies, noting anew the leanness of his body, and the way his muscles played beneath his skin. The scars did not bother him – he had scars of his own – but that red dragon head tattoo made his stomach knot with guilt.

“I didn’t come here to argue,” Slade told Roy. Damn, the kid was younger than Oliver had been the first time he met him. He was small, too. He had a steely gaze, though, which let Slade know he wasn’t the sort of kid to take shit from anybody. “I came to make amends.”

“I noticed,” Roy said, kicking his legs backwards and forwards and turning his gaze to watch Oliver as well. “You know, a lot of the time I can’t really reconcile the fact that that’s _Oliver Queen_. First time I met the guy, I thought he was the biggest fucking wimp. Just… like… all money and no real… I dunno… nothing to back that up. Just money and nothing else. Do you know what I mean?”

Slade laughed. “Yeah, I can see where you’re coming from. First time I met him, he actually _was_ the ‘biggest fucking wimp.’ He was just this spoiled rich kid washed up on Lian Yu by mistake. No idea what real life was. Then he broke his own wrist to get out of the bindings I put him in and clocked me in the face. Not a very expert punch, I’ll give you that, but I gave him points for the wrist thing.”

“I can hear you,” Oliver growled, breaking one of the wooden arms off the dummy.

“Great,” Slade said. “Keep going, then, while I tell Roy about the time you stood on a landmine and I had to save your ass.”

Felicity perked up then. “Wait, what landmine?”

So Slade recounted the story of their trek to landing strip to Felicity and Roy. He noticed that Diggle appeared to be listening in, too, and after a while Oliver came over, sat down beside Roy and began to insert little comments here and there about things that Slade had forgotten.

“I was rubbing these two sticks together – you know, like they do in cartoons and stuff. I tried to light that fire for two hours, though, with these two sticks. Two hours, right?” Oliver said. “And Slade had a lighter the _whole time_.”

“You’ve never told us this story before,” Felicity said. She was smiling.

Oliver shrugged, and his face became distant. “Yeah, well, it reminded me of bad times, I guess. I didn’t want to talk about it.”

There was a heavy silence. Felicity looked like she wanted to apologise, and Roy’s gaze flicked to the floor. Slade felt his chest tighten uncomfortably, because the bad times Oliver were talking about all had to do with himself.

“Then there was that time I almost fell down a mountain,” Slade said, trying to lighten the mood, even though this particular embarrassing story involved Oliver saving him and not vice versa. “Remember?”

And Oliver grinned. “Yeah, I remember. It was just a good thing I got attached to you after all, huh? Otherwise I might’ve just let you fall.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Yeah, me too.”

After that, the mood lightened, and they moved onto stories from when Slade was trying to train Oliver, but he was completely useless. Most of them had Roy laughing, and even Dig cracked a smile or two.

The ice was broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sans laurel because I forgot about her. he'll have to meet her in a later chapter I guess lol.


	22. Twenty-one: The dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver can't sleep. Slade tells him a story from his childhood.

**Chapter Twenty-One:** The dog

Oliver couldn’t sleep. He was tired, but restless at the same time. It was a warm night, and each time he came close to dropping off, he kept recalling bad things and startling awake again. With a huff, he rolled over and kicked off the blankets.

Beside him, Slade stirred. “Go to sleep, kid,” he grumbled.

“Can’t,” Oliver replied. “Do you feel like ice cream?”

“We don’t have any. You finished the last of it two days ago,” Slade mumbled, his eyes still shut.

“Oh yeah.”

Neither of them said anything for a time. Then Oliver said: “Slade, tell me a story.”

Slade sat up with a growl. “Now? In the middle of the night? What are you, three years old?” And then he sighed and relented. “What sort of story?”

“I don’t know. My Dad used to tell me stories when I was a kid. Not often, only sometimes, when he wasn’t busy with work. He wasn’t really all that good at it either, actually. Once he told me about how he went bear hunting, and killed a bear, and then when I asked him to tell me the story again he’d forgotten it. That was the first time I realised he was making them up. Anyway, surely you got told stories when you were a kid?”

“My grandfather told me a lot of old Maori legends, about how the world came to be,” Slade said. “But I’ve told you all the ones I remember before.”

He had. Some nights, when they weren’t too tired, they used to sit around the fire in the plane and tell whatever stories they could remember from their lives before the island. Shado had had a lot of odd little tales that often had some sort of moral. Alternatively, she told them pieces of Chinese history that often involved war. One of her favourite characters was Liu Bei – she had memorised the adventures he and his two brothers, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, had done so back when she was still in school.

Slade used to repeat the stories of his grandfather, though he sometimes wove in tales he’d learnt from the Aborigines in Australia, too.

And Oliver – he hadn’t really known any stories apart from the _Odyssey_ , so first he’d recited that, and then he’d moved on to the ghost stories he and Tommy used to tell each other when they had slumber parties at each other’s houses when they were both still little kids. Slade and Shado had not been particularly impressed by tales about Click Clack Slide, werewolves or the Hook Man. Slade had been somewhat amused by the mating hedgehogs chainsaw one, though Shado hadn’t understood it.

“So make something up,” Oliver challenged Slade now.

“You realise I’m not actually known for my creative ability,” Slade said.

“Then tell me one you’ve told me before.”

“Fine. Let’s see.” Slade scratched his chin. The sound of his nails against his beard was loud in the darkness of the room. “Look, why don’t I tell you about Tiggy.”

“Tiggy?” Oliver repeated, somewhat doubtfully.

“She was my dog. My mother named her. I probably would’ve called her something else, if I had any say in the matter, but I was still in nappies when we got her, so I didn’t really get much of a choice.”

“I never had a dog,” Oliver said.

“Might’ve taught you some responsibility,” Slade said.

Oliver punched him lightly on the arm, and Slade laughed.

“Tell me about Tiggy, then,” Oliver said.

“Tiggy was an ugly bitch,” Slade started, and Oliver snorted. “Look,” Slade said. “I’m just telling it how it was. She looked like she’d run face-first into a brick wall. She was a mixed breed. We didn’t have the money to have her fixed or anything, so throughout my childhood she would have these litters of puppies, just whenever she went into heat and a male dog got into our yard. If we couldn’t give them away, my father used to put them in a sack and drown them in the bathtub.”

Oliver made an exclamation of disgust.

Slade shrugged. “Yeah. I never understood when I was a kid. I’d always named them all by then, and I – don’t tell anyone I told you this, y’hear? – I fucking bawled every time. I know now we could’ve never fed all those dogs, and he was saving them from starving to death slowly. But I hated it.”

“So this was, what, the rural Australian childhood?” Oliver asked.

“Sub-urban,” Slade replied. “Close enough to the same thing, back in those days, though. Especially in the town we were living in. Anyway, as far as dogs go, Tiggy was a pretty regular one, I guess. I mean, she did take a chunk out of me once, when I went too near her while she was eating. Funny story, that, because as soon as he worked out what I’d done, my Dad walloped me raw for doing that.”

“Are you going somewhere with this?”

“Yes. Shut up and let me get there, all right? So, when I was nine, Tiggy must’ve been about seven years old. I was down at the river with some friends. You know, it’s funny, but I can’t even remember their names. So, I wasn’t too crash-hot at swimming back then – stop laughing, I got better and you know it.” Oliver bit his tongue and Slade continued. “Thank god there weren’t any salties in that river. We were too far inland. Anyway, there was this swimming hole, the other kids were better swimmers than I was, and long story short, I got in trouble and just about drowned. Tiggy dragged me out by the hair. Saved my life that day.”

“That’s your story?” Oliver said.

“Essentially. This mean, ugly, mixed-breed bitch saved me from drowning. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here right now. You probably wouldn’t, either. We owe our lives to Tiggy. She died of cancer when I was twelve. I had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, by that stage she was completely incontinent and had been shitting and pissing all over the house for months. My father threatened to take her out the back and shoot her on more than one occasion. She was my dog, though, and she’d saved my life once, and after she was gone, I missed her like crazy. Life’s funny like that.”

“Yeah,” Oliver agreed. “Life’s funny.”

He rolled onto his side and shut his eyes, mulling over the tale of Tiggy the dog and trying to imagine Slade as a kid. When he was almost asleep, Slade woke him up again by saying: “We should get a dog. I like dogs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> drawing on my experience
> 
> of rural new Zealand
> 
> and the tales of been told of what life was like
> 
> 40 odd years ago
> 
> fucking brutal


	23. Twenty-Two: Hinting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slade is looking at dogs in the newspaper.

**Chapter Twenty-Two:** Hinting

Oliver hoped Slade had forgotten the comment he’d made in the middle of the night. The one about getting a dog. Four days passed without mention of anything remotely canine. Oliver realised Slade hadn’t when he caught the other man reading the newspaper. Reading the newspaper was not, in and of itself, incriminating. Browsing the advertisement the local animal shelter put in weekly, with all the mug shots of the animals in need of adoption was, however.

Oliver resolved not to say anything.

He bit his cheek when Slade found a pen and startled circling the dogs he obviously liked the looks of. Neither of them said a word. Later, after Slade had gone to work and the paper was back on the table, untidily folded, Oliver went over to it and pawed through it until he found the ad that showed the pictures of the animals up for adoption.

The first dog Slade had circled was a butt-ugly bulldog missing one eye, with one of its lower canine teeth sticking up over its lip. Its name was Dustin, it was nearly ten years old, and it seemed to have on-going medical issues. Oliver decided they would never be able to afford a dog that needed daily medication.

The second dog Slade had circled was a bug-eyed pug that appeared to be wearing some sort of home-knit sweater in its picture. Oliver skipped over it out of sheer principle.

The third dog looked okay. She was a mix of some sort, with one ear that flopped and one ear that stood up, warm brown eyes, and a tongue that flopped out the side of her mouth. She was brown. Oliver read her description – she was called Gertie, she had been put up for adoption because her old owner was having a baby and handle both a child and a dog.

The fourth was not a dog at all, but a middle-aged tabby cat with a torn ear and a sour expression on his face. His name was Otis, and he’d been returned to the shelter five times because he was just too unfriendly.

A couple of other dogs had also been circled, but neither of them caught Oliver’s eye.

He smiled and shook his head, realising that this probably wasn’t going to go away. But then, it wasn’t as if he actively _disliked_ dogs – sans that one attack dog in China that he wasn’t going to think about. He could even grow to like one well enough, he figured. And if Slade wanted one, well, who was he to say no?

He tore the page with the advertisement out of the newspaper and pocketed it.

Later, at the lair, before Slade got in because he was working a double shift at the docks, he surreptitiously handed the piece of newspaper to Felicity. Felicity took it, scanned it, and then looked at him in bewilderment. “I don’t understand, Oliver. Is there a code in here that I’m supposed to be deciphering?”

“No. I’m thinking about getting a dog, and these are the ones I’ve been considering – but you know how some shelters lie about certain animals’ pasts just to get them out the door, right? I want you to find out if any of these dogs – I don’t know – ever mauled anyone. Oh, and don’t tell Slade.”

“You want me to find out if any of these _dogs_ have criminal pasts?” Felicity repeated, sceptically.

“Essentially, yes,” Oliver replied.

She spun around in her chair to face her computers, muttering: “Sure this won’t be the weirdest thing you ever ask me to do, but this is starting to get pretty paranoid, even for you.”

“Thanks, Felicity,” Oliver said. “I owe you one.”

“Owe her one for what?” Roy asked, lowering his boy to glance at Oliver.

“Pay attention to what you’re supposed to be doing, Roy. You still miss the target entirely half the time,” Oliver said, and chastised, Roy turned back to his archery practice. Diggle snorted.

Slade came in an hour or so later, just as Oliver was suiting up to go on patrol. For a moment, Oliver was afraid that Slade was going to insist on accompanying him, after what happened last time, but instead the other man pulled up a chair and sat down beside Felicity, apparently content to watch from the command centre rather than go out on the front lines. Oliver didn’t say anything, but he was glad. As much as he trusted Slade, the idea of him roaming around Starling City at night, armed, still gave him chills down his back.

Oliver knew that where he often aimed to incapacitate, Slade always went for the kill. Always. Long years in the field, compounded by months spent on the island, where it was never safe to leave an enemy behind them no matter how injured that enemy may be, meant that Slade showed little mercy in the field.

And since Tommy, that wasn’t the way Oliver did things.

Oh, they had discussed Oliver’s change in tactics, and Slade agreed that it worked well enough in this urban environment with the SCPD to come in and clean up behind them, but Slade’s first instinct would always be to kill. He’d been living this way for decades – he was too set in his ways to change now. Oliver wasn’t even thirty yet. Before he washed up on the island seven odd years ago, he’d never even killed his own dinner, let alone another human being. Adapting to a new way of hunting was a lot easier for him.

It was a quiet night. Oliver and Roy busted a couple of guys pedalling the remnants of the Vertigo supply, and stopped a convenience store robbery, then headed in. Dig was taking the night off, because he’d reinjured his arm the other day and if he popped his stitches again they weren’t going to have enough intact skin to stitch him up again.

The SCPD didn’t bother them. The Vigilante taskforce, Oliver had learned, had been recently disbanded. He suspected it had something to do with the fact that Detective Lance was being promoted to Captain soon, on account of his “heroic” actions during the who Slade crisis.

He was actually somewhat pleased about both developments – first, because it meant he could move around the city a little more freely. Second, because Lance was a good man and deserved it.

When Roy and Oliver got back to the second lair, they found Slade, Felicity and Diggle sitting around, drinking hot cocoa. Oliver didn’t know when Felicity had brought the supplies for hot cocoa down here, but he found the fact that she had didn’t surprise him. The fact that there were warm mugs waiting for himself and Roy as well was not surprising either, although sometimes he felt more like he was part of a boys’ scout group than Team Arrow – he would never admit to calling it that – when she did things like this.

Not to say it wasn’t unpleasant.

“So, you just wear sunglasses when you go out,” Felicity was saying. “Like Nick Fury in that second _Captain America_ movie? That’s your disguise?”

“Yes,” Slade said.

“It’s so simple, I don’t think I even would’ve thought of it. I don’t know – I kinda figured you’d go for something a little more elaborate. You know, after that car and the fancy suits and everything.”

Slade shrugged and grinned. “Different circumstances call for different disguises.”

“He learned that in Australian spy school,” Oliver interjected. “I bet you he did.”

Slade said nothing.

Felicity gave him a sideways glance. “Don’t you know a thing or two about that yourself, Oliver?”

“Never,” Oliver said, with a completely straight face.

They all laughed.

The following morning, Felicity got back to him about the dogs. They were all clean – the shelter that had put the ad in the newspaper was a reputable one.

“Thanks, Felicity,” Oliver said, and rang off.

Slade wandered into the room, absently running his fingers over Oliver’s shoulder and down his arm as he wandered past on his way into the kitchen to scrounge up something for breakfast. Sometimes, Oliver wished he would take things further, but he made no comment about it.

Instead, he said: “I was thinking we might go to the animal shelter today. What to you think?”

Slade glanced at him. “Don’t see why not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment for which dog (or cat) you think they should adopt.
> 
> if you want something else, comment too.
> 
> cat/dog with the most comments gets to go home with S+O


	24. Twenty-three: Puppy love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slade and Oliver go to the animal shelter.

**Chapter Twenty-Three:** Puppy love

They arrived at the animal shelter a little bit after ten o’clock in the morning, after Oliver called in sick to his job as a barista, and Slade opted not to go down to work at the docks. Slade, as usual, was wearing sunglasses to hide the fact he was missing one eye, though they had a tendency to make him look like a blind man on occasions like today where it was cloudy and overcast and people kept offering him help – which irritated him immensely.

“If you think about it,” Oliver commented. “You _are_ half-blind. So it’s actually a semi-valid offer.”

“If anyone else said that to me, I’d probably strangle them,” Slade grumbled under his breath as they made their way up the front steps into the animal shelter.

At the reception desk, they were met by a nice young woman who smiled at Slade, and then eyed Oliver suspiciously. To be fair, Oliver was dressed like a typical youth from the slums – oversized hoodie, loose jeans worn thin in one knee, and sneakers with ratty shoelaces combined. Add in the scruffy beard and the face that he was still a little puffy and bruised around one of his eyes from that whole copycat Count Vertigo incident, and he looked like a lowly street thug. Definitely a long way off from the billionaire who used to wear Armani suits and drive cars that cost a million dollars each.

Oh, how the mighty had fallen.

Admittedly, part of it was an act. Who was _really_ going to believe he was Oliver Queen, no matter how much he looked like that former billionaire?

“Hi there,” the young woman said. “What are you here for today?”

“We’d like to adopt a dog,” Slade replied.

“Do you have an appointment?”

Slade and Oliver glanced at each other.

“No,” Oliver said.

“That’s all right. We aren’t very busy this morning anyway. I’ll call Sue around to show you the animals. Why don’t you have a seat in the waiting room and fill out this questionnaire for us while you wait.” She pushed a clipboard and a pen over the desk at them, then nodded to a seating area across from her desk.

“Okay, sure,” Oliver said, taking the clipboard and heading over to take a seat. He scanned the questionnaire, then handed it to Slade. “This is too hard. You do it.”

Slade snorted and shook his head, but took the clipboard and pen and started filling out the papers. “I’m still ‘William Winters,’ right?” he asked.

“Yeah. I can’t think of anything better right now,” Oliver replied.

“Okay. My age is easy enough, I’m forty… I live in Starling City… Cell phone, okay… Don’t have a landline… Work phone, Oliver? What do I give them?”

Oliver didn’t know. “The lair?” he suggested, a little weakly.

“That sounds like a terrible idea,” Slade grumbled, but wrote it down anyway. “Ah – the names of the people you’re living with, their ages, and your relationship to them.” He put the pen down and turned to look at Oliver. “What do you want me to put, kid?”

Well, they weren’t related, so it wasn’t like he could say Slade was his father. He shuddered at the idea – some of the things they had done together were in _no way_ father-son-like. He couldn’t say they were brothers, either, not even adoptive brothers, because Slade was just too much older than he was, though they had been comrades in arms. But the word “roommate” felt too impersonal, somehow.

They weren’t roommates. They had never been _just_ roommates. After everything they’d been through together, their lives were too intertwined for them to ever be as easily separated as a casual roommate was at the end of the year.

“I don’t – I don’t know,” Oliver said.

“Boyfriend?” Slade suggested, and it was hard to read his expression accurately because of the sunglasses, but Oliver thought he was looking sly.

“Yeah, sure,” Oliver agreed, because actually, that was the closest he could come up with. He watched Slade scribble down the words “ _Oliver Queen_ ” and “ _29_ ” and “ _Boyfriend_ ” in his messy scrawl, and felt a peculiar lump in his throat that he had difficulty swallowing.

They moved onto questions about housing.

“Hey, you’re technically the landlord, right?” Slade asked.

“Well, yeah. I own the building,” Oliver replied.

“Are pets allowed?”

Oliver couldn’t remember off the top of his head. “I’m not sure. I’d have to check.”

“We have your permission to get a dog, though?”

“I guess so.” He shrugged.

Slade laughed and left that box unanswered.

“Oliver, I need the names and cell phone numbers of two references. Do you think Miss Smoak and Dig would mind?”

Oliver thought about that for a minute. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I’ll write them down anyway.”

Later, a distinctly unfriendly-looking older woman named Sue came through to the waiting room. She scowled at them both darkly from beneath her dark, bristling eyebrows, and then motioned for them to follow her. They got up and did, and she took the clipboard from them to briefly skim their replies.

“So you’re partners?” she said, as they headed down one hallway, which had had been labelled “ _Animal Housing_.” “How long have you been together?”

Slade glanced at Oliver, who floundered, before saying: “Six years,” because that was how long ago he’d met Slade, although really he hadn’t even been aware Slade was alive for half that time.

“Uh-huh,” Sue said. “So, you aren’t going to suddenly break up and leave an animal without a home?”

“What is this, relationship counselling?” Slade growled.

“No. I just want to make sure we’re sending our animals into the best possible care,” Sue replied. “Nothing breaks my heart more than when we get one of our animals back at the shelter just weeks or months after we sent them out into the world.”

Oliver had a hard time imagining anything breaking her heart, the way she scowled, but he bit his tongue and said nothing.

“Now, were you wanting a cat or a dog today?” Sue asked.

“Actually, we saw some of these animals in the newspaper—” Oliver began, pulling out the ad that Slade had circled the animals on. “And we were wondering if any of them were still available.”

Sue glanced at the piece of paper. “Well, Otis definitely is,” she said.

“Can we see him?” Oliver asked.

She took them to the wing where they kept the cat runs. Otis was being kept in a room by himself, so he didn’t fight with the other cats, apparently. As soon as they stepped into the room, the tabby cat arched his back and hissed menacingly – before advancing towards them slowly and menacingly.

“Otis takes a while to warm up to new people,” Sue explained, as Oliver took a step backwards away from the cat and accidentally walked into Slade, who chuckled lowly.

“It’s just a cat, Oliver,” he said.

“A _mean_ cat,” Oliver muttered. He hadn’t forgotten the puma he tangled in the woods a few months after he got back from the island, and while this cat was smaller, cats were all still cats.

Slade stepped out from behind Oliver and crouched down while Sue rattled off Otis’ history and neither of them really listened to her. Otis hesitated for a moment, regarded Slade warily, then approached. Slade held out the back of his hand for the cat to sniff, which it dutifully did, before hissing again and swiping at him with its claws. Slade leapt back, nursing a nasty scratch that started welling up with blood immediately.

Oliver laughed. Otis reminded him of Slade – he was all wary suspicion and attack first, as questions later. Slade gave him a sour look, as Sue hastened to find an antiseptic wipe for his hand.

“I think I like this cat,” Oliver said.

“I don’t,” Slade replied.

“That’s because you’re too alike,” Oliver told him, as the battered tabby sniffed his jeans before winding around his leg. He reached down and scratched Otis behind the ear, and the cat began to purr faintly.

“Can we look at the dogs?” Slade asked, and Sue took them through to another wing of the animal shelter, where there were dozens of dogs, all in concrete runs with wire doors. As soon as they saw humans, the dogs rushed up to the doors and started barking madly. Some were clearly aggressive, and they snarled, spittle flying from their muzzles, while others wiggled excitedly, their whole bodies wagging with their tails.

“Dustin was taken in by a rescue,” Sue was saying, speaking loudly to be heard over all of the barking. “And we had to euthanize Blaze because he bit one of the workers. But we’ve still Gertie and Lawrence.”

Lawrence was the sweater-pug. Slade and Oliver stopped outside its cage, and Oliver looked down at as it stared us at them with its enormous, bug-like, bulging eyes. It was wearing a canary yellow sweater today. Every breath it took, it rasped asthmatically, and one of its eyes was weeping a little. Oliver felt sorry for it, but he wasn’t sure he could cope with having it in his home, either.

“What about Gertie?” he said, hoping Slade didn’t have his heart set on the sweater-pug. A glance in the other man’s direction, however, showed relief.

Gertie was a young dog, only two years old. She was medium-sized, and very friendly. When they were let in the meet her, she jumped up on both of them, licking at their hands and whining.

“Gertie’s a good dog,” Sue said. “But not everyone has the time to meet her energy requirements. She needs a lot of exercise – it says here you live in an apartment.”

“Yeah,” Oliver said.

“She’ll need two good walks a day, and to be taken outside to the bathroom more often than that. She also needs some obedience work done with her, so she doesn’t jump up on people anymore and won’t pull on the leash. Are you going to be able to deal with that sort of commitment?” She was looking at Oliver as she said it.

He wasn’t sure.

“Yes,” Slade said, for him.

Oliver frowned. They had made it back to the reception area, Gertie in tow this time, before he made up his mind.

“Look,” he said to Sue. “Is she any good with cats?”

“She lived with one before with no issues,” Sue replied.

So they ended up adopting Otis as well, even though Slade wasn’t particularly fond of the beaten-up old tabby.

In the car on the way back to the apartment, after they’d been to the store to pick up some emergency pet supplies, they considered new names for both the animals. Otis was in a cat carrier on the back seat, and Gertie had somehow ended up in Slade’s lap in the passenger seat. She had her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth, her one ear pricked and alert.

“I don’t know,” Slade said. “My ex-wife named Joe. I’m not exactly the best with names.”

“‘Gertie’ is a terrible name, though,” Oliver said. “It makes me think of, like, little old ladies in retirement homes or something.”

“I knew a Gertie, once,” Slade told him. “She was a friend of my grandmother’s, back in New Zealand. She used to give us little ones boiled sweets when we were ‘round at her place for Sunday tea. They always tasted a bit like cabbage, though.”

“See. She needs a different name,” Oliver said.

“Well can you think of one?”

“No.”

Gertie she stayed, and neither of them saw anything wrong with the name Otis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's the thing.
> 
> they're starting to build a family around themselves, but they still haven't even realised they're doing it.
> 
> in other news, this story is maybe 3/4 done. i worked out the final plot points on a post-it note earlier this morning.
> 
> my hands are freezing. it's so fucking cold here right now you don't even know.


	25. Twenty-four: Avoidance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slade does not want to meet Laurel.

**Chapter Twenty-Four:** Avoidance

Of the two pets, Gertie took the most work. Slade found taking her out most of the time, though Oliver often took her jogging in the mornings. Otis, however, turned out to be the more irritating of the two pets. They quickly learned that if either of them wanted a good night’s sleep, they needed to shut him out of the bedroom, as he had an annoying habit of crawling up the bed and waking them up by purring loudly in their ears and licking their necks with his sharp, raspy little tongue, which felt remarkably like wet sandpaper in the middle of the night.

The first time Otis did this, it was to Oliver, and he woke up with a start, his heart thundering. He jumped so violently that he also woke Slade, and startled Otis so badly that the cat spat at him before bounding off the bed and disappearing into the other room, his tail fluffed up magnificently. Gertie, who had been curled up on the foot of the bed, just whined piteously, while Slade asked him whether he’d had another nightmare in that low voice he usually reserved for the middle of the night.

“No,” Oliver replied, feeling somewhat disconcerted. “No, I’m all right. The cat was just licking me, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting it.”

Slade took a couple of moments to digest that, then he laughed.

“I feel dirty,” Oliver complained, reaching up to feel the wet patch on his neck below his ear where Otis had been licking him.

“Go back to sleep, kid,” Slade said, his eye glinting with amusement. “You can shower in the morning.”

Three nights later, Otis did exactly the same thing to Slade, who woke Oliver up with an outraged yelp.

It was almost entirely coincidental that for nearly two weeks following the incident with the new – copycat? – Count Vertigo, Slade and Laurel had been coming in to the lair on opposing nights. Or, Oliver thought it was coincidental until he realised that Slade had worked out the comings and goings of all of the Team Arrow – _no, he would not call them that!_ – members months ago, and was perhaps making an effort to avoid her.

He puzzled over the fact that Slade would try and avoid Laurel when he’s been so forward about meeting everyone else on the team for some time.

Then he noticed that Felicity, Diggle, and Roy were all being careful not to mention that Slade had been down there at all to Laurel, and he wondered why they would bother doing that. He was fairly certain the cat was out of the bag and there was no way of getting it back in because it was essentially not a cat at all but a ruthless tiger and… he had no idea where he was going with that metaphor. He probably should’ve paid more attention in English class.

Laurel’s night to come in to the lair rolled around. Slade started making it obvious that he wasn’t coming too when he kicked off his boots and put on his slippers instead, before they’d even eaten dinner. Oliver looked at him. Slade ignored the look and picked up one of the numerous paperback crime novels that now littered their living room, sat down on the couch and patted his leg. Gertie jumped up on the couch beside him and laid down with her head on his lap.

“Slade,” Oliver said, an hour or so later as he shrugged on his leather jacket in preparation for leaving. “You coming tonight?”

“Not tonight,” Slade replied, only glancing up briefly to peer at him over the rims of his glasses.

“Why?”

There was a pause, as Slade noticeably sought an answer. Oliver had never questioned his _not_ coming before.

“I don’t feel like,” Slade said, after a long moment. “Tweaked my shoulder last night. I should probably take it easy for a couple of days.” To make his point, he rolled his shoulders and cringed. Oliver could tell he was faking though, and he knew how to prove it, too.

“How does it feel?” he asked.

Slade scowled. “How does _what_ feel, kid?”

“Turning into an old man?”

Slade took a moment to process that. Then he threw down his book with a huff and got to his feet. “That’s a low blow,” he grumbled, stalking past Oliver into the bedroom.

“Didn’t know you were so sensitive about it,” Oliver replied, following him to lean against the doorjamb and watch as he got changed. “So. Why don’t you want to come tonight, really?”

Slade, who was halfway through changing out of the grimy shirt he’d worn at the docks all day, sighed. “The Lance girl.”

“Laurel,” Oliver corrected him. “You use everyone else’s names all right, and if you call her that I’ll just get her mixed up with Sara.”

Slade grunted in acquiescence. “Laurel,” he agreed. “She’ll be there.”

“And that’s an issue?” Oliver said, somewhat bemusedly.

“In case you don’t remember, I had her kidnapped and threatened to kill her.”

Oliver cocked his head. “You also kidnapped Felicity,” he pointed out.

“Felicity is just your IT girl. She’s not—” Slade cut himself off. “You and Laurel go way back. You used to stare at her picture for hours at a time back on the island.”

 _That_ was this was about? Was Slade jealous or something – hang on. He was. Oliver almost laughed. Then he caught himself because Slade had genuinely been making an effort to avoid Laurel for days.

“I don’t get it,” he said honestly. “We’re just friends, Slade.”

“I hurt her. I was going to _kill_ her, Oliver. I was ready to run her through.” Okay, maybe it was more than jealousy, then.

“Yeah, but you didn’t,” Oliver said.

“Only because blondie stopped me,” Slade said. Oliver glared at him, and Slade hastily amended himself with: “Felicity.”

“Well,” Oliver said, stepping into the room. “Laurel’s smart. She’ll understand you weren’t yourself…”

“You hope.”

Oliver rubbed the back of his neck somewhat awkwardly. “Yeah. I hope.”

As they left the apartment together ten minutes later, Oliver said: “Slade. Laurel and I – we are just friends now. We tried and didn’t work. So.”

“Okay,” Slade said. He still hard a worried furrow at his brow, though, when they got into the car, and Oliver wondered what he was so concerned about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry chapter is short also long hiatus I am very busy please excuse me.

**Author's Note:**

> Just gonna run with this and see where it takes me. I'll prolly have some fairly long hiatuses between certain chapters because of the course i'm on and stuff. So sorry for those in advance yo.


End file.
